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OUT OF THE 
PAST 


BY 

ELEANOR HOOPER CORYELL 



NEW YORK 

STREET & SMITH, Publishers 

238 William Street 


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Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1899 
By Street & Smith, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 


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i 


OUT OF THE PAST 


CHAPTER I. 

Threads in the woof of Destiny 
Mingle their dark and shine — 
lyove in its glory of sacrifice. 

Fear with its terrors fine. 

Birth, Death and the Hero — 

Which in the woof is strong? 

Which thread will break in the weaving 
And silence the weaver’s song? 

The heat of a midsummer noon quivered in the heavy 
air; no wind stirred, street and courtyard alike were de- 
serted, and the white walls of stuccoed buildings glared 
back at the sun. The red tiles on roof and wall seemed 
darts of flame where their edges outlined the houses scat- 
tered irregularly on the steep hillside of St. Cloud; and 
the winding river beneath shone fiercely. There was no 
air — only heat^ heat insufferable. An alley zigzagging 
down the sharpest incline of the hill above the village 
seemed to focus all the heat of sun and reflecting sur- 
faces, and there was not an inch of shade on its cobble- 
stones. A goat, passing in the street above, looked down. 


8 


Out of the Past. 


but wandered on, for the door-way of the only garden 
was closed on the glaring, barren spot. Noon was pass- 
ing. 

A tall, black figure crossed the street above and came 
quickly through the passage, the white wings of her 
head-covering glistening and her garments swaying about 
as she came over the uneven pavement, with the cross of 
the Saviour gleaming from her girdle. She had thrust her 
hands within her loose sleeves for protection from the 
sun, and on one arm carried a large basket. 

She knocked repeatedly at the garden door without re- 
ceiving any response, and, crossing the passage, looked 
up at the open windows, calling : 

‘‘Madame! It is Sister Clothilde from the nursery.’’ 

She pushed the door back and entered the house, to 
find no one either in the first room or in the kitchen ; the 
shutters of the inner chamber were closed, and with the 
glare still in her eyes, she could at first distinguish noth- 
ing within the room. A ray of light shot through the 
space above the shutter, falling upon a white figure lying 
on the bed, with its coverings thrown partly on the floor. 

Something moved there with a quavering, stifled sound 
as the tall woman reached the bed and gently parted the 
clothes. 

“Oh, mon Dieu! the little one — the poor little one — 


Out of tlie Past. 9 

and pretty madame! Jesu! without help, without a hu- 
man being!’’ 

The face of the mother grew gradually more clearly 
defined, until it seemed to have absorbed all the light 
there was in the room. It was thrown back, deep in the 
pillow, with dark circles about its eyes, and its nostrils 
widely distended. Under the touch of the Sister’s hands 
the child began to cry and she laid it down, wrapped in 
narrow strips of linen torn from the sheet. She listened 
in vain on the woman’s breast for the faintest heart-beat, 
and placed a hand mirror before the still face, whispering 
a prayer the while; but when she turned the mirror to 
look, her prayer ceased abruptly. There was not the 
faintest trace of film on the polished surface of the glass. 
The high, strident crying of the child had ceased, and but 
for its short, rapid breathing the silence of the place 
would have been complete. Green lights and shadows 
filled the room, and the sultry air crept slowly in between 
the slats. 

With a tender, hesitating touch, the Sister smoothed 
the face, which as yet showed no sign of death save its 
whiteness and cold, and spread the delicate lace, crumpled 
and matted about the shoulders and throat, drawing the 
folds of fresh linen about the figure until it lay perfect 
and chaste in its still white, lines. 


lO 


Out of the Past. 


She left the room noiselessly and ran through the 
court, shielding her eyes from the blazing light. 

On the street above a boy was edging his way along 
the wall. 

^'Garcon,’^ she cried, ‘'run as fast as you can for the 
doctor and the priest V The boy gave a hesitating glance 
skyward. 

“You are afraid of the sun? Remember, there will be 
something hotter to run from when you die. Ah, Antoine, 
is it you? Quick! Bring the doctor and Father Bene- 
dict to the house here on the passage.’’ 

The boy nodded when he recognized her, and scurried 
off. 

Back in the shadowed room the Sister placed candles 
by the side of the bed, and unfastening the crucifix from 
her belt, stood it above the head of the fair-haired woman. 
In the shadiest corner the new-born child was sleeping 
on a pillow. 

The doctor was the first to arrive. He came in quickly 
and stood by the bed, gravely silent. 

“It is death/’ he said. 

“Could you have saved her an hour ago?” 

He slightly shrugged his shoulders, asking: 

“Did she breathe then?” 

“There was no sign on the mirror.” 


Out of tlie Past. 


II 


‘'Then it was all over before that. Is there another 
dead?'' he asked, looking about the room. 

She shook her head, and, raising the basket, held it 
while he carefully examined the sleeping infant. 

The examination over^ he said with a smile: ‘T think 
you know better what to do with it than I. If you take 
it away from here to-day, wait till an hour before sun- 
down, and be careful of the light. Good-day, madame." 
He was going when she exclaimed : 

‘T must search the house; will you not stay to wit- 
ness ?" 

‘T have other calls. A priest will be better than 1. 
Good-day, madame." 

“He is not a Catholic," murmured Sister Clothilde. 

She lighted the candles and strewed the petals of the 
roses on the pillows. The light of the candles grew 
steady, while she gazed on the golden crowned face and 
crossed herself with a startled movement as she saw a 
tear lying beneath the lashes. 

The door opened quietly, and a monk stood for an in- 
stant a silent spectator, then dropped on his knees for 
self-communion before beginning the rite of the dead. 
The interval over, he rose, and, loosening his cowl, stood 
by the bed, pouring forth the long, low cadence of the 
ritual, intoning the periods in a deep, rich voice. It rose 


12 


Out of the Past. 


and fell like a wind in the forest. For nearly half an 
hour the voice filled the room. The monk scattered holy 
water over the body and knelt beside the bed opposite 
Clothilde. A long, unbroken silence followed. They 
rose and crossed themselves. 

‘'When did this happen?'' the priest asked. 

“Before I came at noon." 

“Who is she?" 

“I do not know." 

“How came you here?" 

“A month ago she came to the nursery to see the chil- 
dren and, giving us money, she bade me come here to- 
day to receive clothes for my poor. She said she should 
be moving in that time from Paris to St. Cloud." 

“Did she give you her address or name ?" 

“No." 

“Is she French?" 

“She said she was an American." 

The priest stepped to the head of the bed and looked 
at the hands of the dead woman. 

“She wears two rings." 

“I had not thought to look," said Sister Clothilde, sim- 
ply. “We must search the house. There is a letter lying 
there which may help us. Will you read it?" 


“I do not read English well." 


Out of the Past. 


13 


She took the letter to the window, while the monk 
leaned his elbow on the toilet-table watching her. The 
candle light heightened the deep coloring of his young 
face, falling softly on his yellow robe, defining the white 
lining of its cowl and the white knotted cords about his 
waist. The Sister scanned the letter first, glancing nerv- 
ously at the dead woman. 

‘Tt is a letter to her husband. I think I ought not to 
read it.” 

''As you please, but tell me the facts in it, and let me 
make a copy.” 

"Why, Benedict?” 

"We are the only witnesses and in time our testimony 
will be needed.” 

"Do you think we may share the care of the boy ?” 

"Heaven has placed him in our charge.” 

"She calls him Robert — her husband, I suppose; tells 
him she has left Paris because the care of the house was 
too great; begs him to save his father even the mention 
of her name.” 

"Ah! I thought the face of a coward would show it- 
self.” 

"Why?” 

"Could any but a coward leave a woman alone in a 
foreign land to meet this ? It is worse than I thought.” 


14 


Out of the Past. 


'‘Benedictr’ 

‘'It proves the existence of one more woman who still 
loved when she had ceased to be loved/’ 

“I think you are unjust. Do you believe any one could 
cease to love her ?” He turned a long look on the shroud- 
ed figure. 

“Perhaps no true man could forget. But show me one 
such. They are few!” 

“Do not forget where you are speaking,” she whis- 
pered. 

“No. I speak in the presence of the wronged dead ; in 
the presence of the child who will grow to manhood 
knowing neither father nor mother; who will always 
carry in his breast a bitter doubt.” 

“But I will keep the rings — everything which can 
prove that he is the son of a true woman.” 

“Even if you prove it to the world,” the monk answered 
wearily, “can you arm the- child against his secret fears ? 
He will know, from his own manhood, that no true man 
could have left her.” 

She loosened the kerchief about her throat and sank 
into a chair. Presently she said, softly : 

“Is the world, then, so bad?” 

“Look there!” he cried sharply, pointing to the bed. 


Out of the Past. 


15 


She rose trembling, and crossing her hands on her 
breast said gently: 

"'I see only the hand of God in the greatest of His 
mysteries/’ 

The monk’s head sank forward and his hand dropped. 
She gazed at the unnatural beauty of the woman’s face, 
a beauty more than human in the strange mingling of the 
light of day and the golden candle light. The green 
shifting shadows of the room seemed to form an impene- 
trable barrier between her and the outer world. The nun 
stood without the circle of light, but something of its 
softened glory shone in her face. Benedict rose, and 
drawing down her hands he touched them with his fore- 
head. 

^^You always save me from myself, my friend. I thank 
God He taught me how to love you.” 

An hour later she stood waiting without the chamber 
as Benedict opened the door. In the outer room she had 
opened the shutters upon a table covered with linen, laces, 
and a few pieces of jewelry. 

‘‘Are there no papers ; no bills or letters ?” 

“No; but there is a large sum of money. Will you 
please count it?” Benedict complied, and they looked at 
each other. 

“What shall we do?” she ^sked. 


i6 


Out of the Past. 


''Are you sure there are no papers to suggest her 
identity or any connection with other persons?’’ 

"There is absolutely nothing. I have searched through 
waste paper and all. Her linen is marked with the letters 
A. D.” 

Coming at last again to the silent room, they brought 
out the basket and set it between them, talking low as 
they watched the breathing of the tiny being, until their 
absorption was broken by the tolling of the vesper bell 
from the chapel tower on the hill. They knelt where 
they were, and Benedict softly intoned the prayer. 

All was prepared for the nun’s departure with the 
child. 

At the door she turned impulsively to the monk. "Let 
me examine the mother's rings — there may be some 
mark.” 

Benedict answered by bringing them to her, and they 
read engraved within one of them, "R. W. to Amy Dins- 
more. May loth, 1876.” 

"A year and three months ago,” said the Sister, mus- 
ingly. "It may have been the ring of betrothal. God be 
with you.” 

"And with you,” returned Benedict. "Send word to 
the Superior of what has happened.” She nodded, pass- 
ing quickly up the passage with her muffled burden, 


Out of tlie Past. 


17 


while Benedict watched her from the door of the long 
white wall. A breeze stirred in the treetops. The shrill 
whistle of the steamer sounded as the nun hurried down 
the steep incline, and, running through the gates, stepped 
on board. From the passage overhanging the town, the 
young monk watched the receding vessel until it passed 
beyond the turn of the shining river. The sun, too, would 
soon be gone. He locked the garden door-way and slowly 
went into the inner room. The last lighted candle beside 
the shrouded figure had sunk into a ring of white. The 
flame rose suddenly, blue and high, illumining the face 
once again. The monk was alone with death in the still, 
warm darkness. 


CHAPTER IL 


‘‘Whatever in your life you have thought unchangeable, shall 
change; whatever you have thought to change, shall remain. So 
run the cards.” 

Twenty-one years had passed over the head of Bene- 
dict, graving his face and hands with traces of hardship 
and struggle, but leaving few lines of gracious joy. He 
had been strong and intractable. He still wore his san- 
dals and his robe of low station, while others mounted 
beyond him to the vantage of ecclesiastical success. Mas- 
terful and able though he was, he looked gravely for- 
ward to ending his life in cheerless days of ceaseless 
work. He loved the pulpit and those moments rarely 
vouchsafed him when he looked down into the eyes of the 
people and spoke to them from the knowledge won by his 
sorrow and sacrifice. 

But those were most rare moments, accorded with such 
niggardly hand, that when the news ran among the people 
that Father Benedict would preach to them they crowded 
the edifice as though bidden to a feast. 

While his life had been hardening to its crystal form 
Robert Dinsmore had been born to the care of strangers, 


Out of the Past. 


19 


Robert’s young life had been unfolding, nebulous and 
uncertain in its values. It was twenty-one years since 
and he stood to-day within the walls of the monastery 
looking defiantly at his past, and watching his opportunity 
to break with it. Benedict had used a portion of his 
money in the search for his father; but to no purpose. 
Robert grew up proudly alone, daring every one with 
his quick, brilliant eyes, to cast the slur he hated. How 
great a scourge his unfathered life and its ill-fame had 
been no one can know who has not been born to wear that 
shirt of nettles. 

The ancient garden in which he and Benedict stood 
silently regarding each other, with a sense of the parting 
of ways, spread about them in a wide acreage of au- 
tumnal glory. The garden was mellow with memories 
of olden pomp and power, disclosed in its iron work of 
fantastic fashioning, in the make of its walls and in the 
stately beauty of its avenues. At the same time, the 
garden was young with the beauty of countless flowers — 
the life of the hour zealously fostered by the monks. 

At this moment, conscious of the old and the new ways 
of living, which seemed to lay hands upon him, each to 
make him its own^ Robert stood watching Benedict, in 
whose hands he had reluctantly placed a few leaves of 
manuscript. 


20 


Out of tlie Past. 


''This is part of your diary. It is good to see it. I 
suppose these are pages of special importance.’’ 

"No. I took them at random, excepting the last page.” 

"For what purpose?” 

"I think you will see when you have finished.” 

At first Benedict read to himself, but, gradually for- 
getting his surroundings, he walked back and forth, read- 
ing half aloud: 

" 'The monastery walls are closing in upon me with 
the weight of gratitude they impose. Here I have spent 
my life since early childhood. To the fathers I owe all 
my knowledge, a training so systematic and so liberal 
that the learning of the schools would be meagre beside 
it. Here, under Father Anselm music has become my 
mistress. Yet I dare not stay here. Better an honest 
layman than a renegade priest. I cannot decide to-day. 
The sense of all I owe these dear friends sits heavy on 
me.’ * * * ‘I must be free. How the world sings 

to me! How I long to pass these walls! How the joy 
of strife runs in my veins. To measure strength with 
the times — to be plunged in the current of my genera- 
tion. I am dead here. I have not been born yet. These 
men in the world of whom I read from day to day — am I 
their equal? To them the achievement — to me the fate 
of the dry leaves upon which the history of their deeds is 


Out of the Past 


21 


written. Let me forget it all. And yet they would make 
of me a priest and promise me a great future — prefer- 
ment, etc. The irony of misconception.’ ^ ^ 

'' ‘To-day I have disgraced myself and the fathers, and 
I am told that the monastery will soon be in disfavor be- 
cause of my deeds. I did but trounce a fellow who richly 
deserved it. Let me get away; where my life belongs 
only to the Law and myself.’ * * * 

“ ‘The day is black with the stain of yesterday — not of 
the fight, but of its vile cause. I am sick to the heart 
with this knowledge that whoever has an evil thought 
may cast it upon me with a show of justice. It is worse 
than a live flesh wound — I could cauterize that. But how 
cauterize this wound that opens now in my heart, now 
in my very soul? Yet I look respectable. My parentage 
cannot have been absolutely low. Slender hands, and a 
head with features regular and sane, hardly can be the 
product of low-born individuals. Yet how came I here 
otherwise? God! How deep a punishment my father 
has laid upon me.’ * * * 

“ ‘To-day I am free of that terrible impulse to punish 
others for my misfortune. My violin helps me. It sings 
of another world. It knows no baseness, a paladin or 
paradise living for perfection only.’ * * ^ 

“ ‘Another doubtful day, and, as usual, I am at odds 


22 


Out of the Past. 


with my surroundings. I played half the day away yes- 
terday and, in consequence, I had the whole monastery 
by the ears. No one could keep at prayers because of 
my playing, it seems. The Superior’s discourse was 
spoiled. The novitiates trampled the seedlings under my 
windows and failed in their tasks. The deliberative body 
of high authorities came to settle matters of high concern, 
forgot what they had come for, and departed in ashes of 
contrition. This adds a new temptation to my list. I 
would like to try my skill on as many worldlings who 
know what music is. But small chance of that. I have 
been admonished and banished to a tower-top with my 
offending paladin, where we will have the clouds and 
the sparrows to entertain. 

‘‘ T had not counted on the pigeons. They come in 
droves and whirl about my head while I play. 

'The city lies beneath me in its wondrous meanings. 
They incite to long day dreaming. What are the dramas 
going forward, what tragedies, what forgotten lines of 
gentle simplicity are hidden under the roofs? 

" 'What is the government doing? Will it bring Drey- 
fus back to trial or will he be found dead when sought 
for? What is it all about? And why does no one care 
for the ruined life of a man, and that other life ruined 
with his? Strange country — at times I think I am not 


Out of the Past. 


23 


your son. Even Pater Benedict sides against my under- 
standing — Benedict, usually so just.' * * * 

“ ‘A violinist is needed at the Grand Opera House. I 
shall apply. I shall succeed. How simple it all seems. 
All my struggle was with the phantoms of my brain, 
after all. 

‘I obtained leave and went to the trial. My mind is 
still on fire with it — not with the examination, but with 
life in its struggle of man to man. The pitting of oneself 
against other men — there was the fearful pleasure. I 
want more men to meet like that.' ^ * 

'To-day I have secured my rooms and I go on duty 
to-mofrow. There is but one sore spot — my Pater. I 
should have told him yesterday had he not been in Rouen. 
I fear he will see only ingratitude in this. A soul so 
high as his is never at war with itself as mine is. It will 
not stoop to measure a sacrifice as I measure the sacri- 
fice of every day and every hour. With a nature greater 
and more turbulent than mine, he treads this joyless road 
serenely when my whole being would be in revolt. What 
a joy it would be to take him with me into the world! 
What a path we would hew — my paladin. Pater and I. 
But I am an enthusiastic fool. He has no love of the 
world. He will chide me.’ " 


24 


Out of the Past. 


‘^No, I will not,” cried Benedict, "'but I would you had 
not shown that you have been so unhappy with us.” 

''Indeed I am sorry/' returned Robert. "But I feel old 
here. Your life would turn me into a gravestone.” 

"Can you not stay and bear with us for another year?” 

"I cannot,” he replied. "Did you ever think how little 
there will be left to me after my youth is gone?” 

"What can you mean?” 

"I mean that I must not live as others do. I must live 
alone. I cannot marry.” 

"This is foolish.” 

"Not so foolish. Pater,” said the young man, avoiding 
Benedict's eyes. "I have no name to offer but the one 
you have chosen for me — a name for convenience, but not 
my own. I want something of my own. I will not live 
lost in the world like an empty cask drifting in the sea.” 

Benedict was long silent. "What is youf desire?” 

"A name of which I shall not be ashamed. And if I 
had a son he could be proud of it.” 

"How vehement thou art! In the reality of life, the 
names of things matter little.” 

"And honor?” asked Robert, softly. 

"Honor does not rest in the deeds of your father, but 
in your own. This name you bear is honorable because 
you have made us love and respect it.” 


Out of the Past. 


25 


“A name sullied before it was given me V* 

The priest quickly retorted: ''You wrong the dead. I 
have never seen this in you before, Robert Dinsmore, and 
I will not listen to it again. If there was wickedness, it 
was washed out in the agony of death when your mother 
gave you birth. You are young and intolerant ; and judge 
with your head and not with your heart.” 

"I have had nothing to love; why should I have a 
heart?” 

"You will find it, my son. But I do not like this bit- 
terness. What right have you to judge your mother 
with a harshness you have never shown the worst women 
we have tried to help?” 

"But my father — he showed little reverence for her.” 

"Man!” cried the priest, "judgment is not your right. 
Do not call its wrath down upon your head? I saw your 
mother. I touched her when the warmth had gone from 
her body but a little while. There could not be a face 
more fit to meet the eye of its Judge. There could not 
be sweeter purity, and I believe with all my soul that 
evil never lurked there. You have shamed her in this 
hour. You are an unworthy son.” 

Robert’s head drooped, and a long pause followed, while 
the priest reviewed the cases waiting for him and balanced 
against them the need of the proud boy. Then he sat 


26 


Out of tlie Past. 


down leisurely upon the grass and motioned Robert to a 
place beside him. 

‘'You should have told me all this before/’ he said, 
gently. “How long has it been in your mind?” 

“Always. Ever since I could think — before I left the 
care of Sister Clothilde.” 

When the priest next spoke there was unusual warmth 
in his rich voice. 

“Lad, do you know how much I have cared for you? 
Do you never see that I choose your companionship in 
preference to that of my brothers ? It is not my habit to 
show affection. A man grows hardened who lives alone. 
But, if I cannot express it so that you will feel it, you 
have brought into my life a happiness I never hoped to 
have. This is my life : I was the son of a wealthy baker 
of Provence. I was given an education and was sent to 
Paris to choose a vocation. I tutored in a family of high 
position. My charge had a sister. It goes hard to speak 
of it even now when years have sped away; when the 
hope of youth can never again make spring in my heart ; 
when she is dead, and there is left me nothing but to 
live for others as I would have lived for her.” 

Robert leaned toward him with eager eyes and whis- 
pered : 

“Pater — it was Sister Clothilde.” 


Out of tlie Past 


27 


*‘How do you know?” asked Benedict, calmly. 

''Because I remember waking to hear her crying very 
softly, whispering your name over and over.” 

The priest was so still that Robert thought he could 
hear the flutter of each leaf above him. In the silence he 
watched a sorrowful change in Benedict’s face and saw 
with awe the moisture settle in the deep circles of his 
eyes. 

"If I had known it,” he murmured over and over, until 
Robert said, softly : 

"Yes, Pater; what then?” 

"She never should have entered the convent. I never 
would have been priest. Ah, well,” he muttered, after an 
uneasy, wandering look over the austere lines of the 
monastery, "life is like that. Your supremest happiness 
goes like a cloud fading into the sky. It never comes a 
second time. You must satisfy your soul with the second 
best and pray God for contentment.” 

The most painful impression Benedict produced upon 
Robert was the hopelessness of one whose possibilities 
had all been tested, the boundaries of whose life had been 
set like unseen walls, growing higher and thicker, but 
never expanding. He recognized faintly, against the 
hope of his young heart, that there would never be a 
wide completeness. For a moment he was ready to sac- 


28 


Out of tlie Past. 


rifice his plan and tread the still path of renunciation with 
Benedict. But a wind in the tree-tops, a sound beyond 
the walls, who knows what? stirred his pulses. The con- 
sciousness of hope and power grew big in his heart and 
youth, with its boundless aspiration, reasserted itself. 
Benedict had roused himself and was looking down upon 
his hand, which Robert still held abstractedly. 

''Now you understand,'' he said. "It was my Louise 
(whom you knew as Sister Clothilde) — it was my Louise 
who discovered you at St. Cloud. It was she who put 
you in my arms and demanded protection for you. And 
so I have loved you as I never loved any other charge or 
comrade. You are the link between us. You will learn 
in time that the dead never seem dead to us. I always 
feel that she may knock at the gates some day and de- 
mand to see what manner of man I have made of thee. 
So you pained me when you showed what a gloomy life 
this has been to you, a life from which you are glad to 
escape." 

Robert could say nothing. He knew that Benedict 
hoped for a response such as he could have given a few 
moments ago. Reading the reply in Robert's downcast 
face, Benedict changed his attitude with a sigh. 

"I have told you that I cannot express myself in the 
natural language of affection because repression has been 


Out of the Past. 


29 


my habit for so long; habit is strong. But I have given 
you to-day the best proof of affection a man can give. I 
have shown you my heart. That that is painful, you are 
not old enough to know. Put your hand in mine. (See 
what it is to pound one's heart into a habit — I cannot 
take it if you do not give it me.) So — to this nervous 
young hand you have given its task in life already, before 
your body has reached its full stature even." 

Robert felt that Benedict was bidding him farewell, 
and he rebelled as youth invariably rebels against finality. 

“But it is not far to the Place de TOpera." 

“You are mistaken. It is very far — all the way beyond 
the outermost circle of my duties. I may call upon you. 
But what is that? The communion of interest will never 
be the same. Still I cannot say, remain with me. I would 
not have you like myself when you are in your prime." 

“You regret the monastery exceedingly," said Robert, 
with doubting wonder. 

“Exceedingly. If it is a sin, I hope the sacrifice of my 
life will atone. If it will not, there are many others to 
suffer with me." Robert crossed himself and the priest 
looked back at him with a smile. 

“You are so young, Robert, with all your depth and all 
your power! But tell me now what in your heart of 
hearts is the thing for which you long." 


30 


Out of the Past. 


“For my father/’ he answered very low. 

“Always the same thing — the quest of the impossible. 
Fame may come to you, as I believe it will, but I doubt 
if it will make you happy. You will wear your heart out 
seeking one man in a worldful. Can you not let it rest 
in peace?” 

Such a look of wonder and reproach met Benedict’s 
words that he sighed. “I forget that youth has always 
the right of it. Its impulse is nearer to nature. The 
wing of its hopes has not been broken. But come ; show 
me your apartment, tell me your plans. Let me get into 
the current of it all, so that I may be glad with you.” 

So saying, Benedict rose and turned quickly toward 
the gate of the monastery. 


CHAPTER III. 


Youth — ‘‘The cup grows bitter as I drink.” 

Sage — “Aye, but the dregs are sweet. They bring oblivion. 
So drink on.” — Old Tale. 

One morning, far into the winter, a young girl stepped 
from a cab at the door of the monastery, and, waiting for 
a reply, presented a sealed letter at the office to be sent to 
the Superior. As a result, word went to Benedict that 
he would be required to assume the charge of a young 
foreigner who had come bearing letters of consideration 
from the head of the college in Canada. 

The Superior exhorted him to turn this young soul into 
the paths of holiness. Such an undertaking had never 
formed a part of his duty, and Benedict felt a decided 
repulsion to it. He went slowly to the office, where a 
young girl rose to meet him and followed to one of the 
rooms used for the reception of visitors. 

When she was seated in the full light of the windows 
set high in the wall, Benedict noticed a bright serenity of 
face which spoke well for the serenity of her soul. She 
immediately opened the conversation in uncertain French. 

‘^The letter which I brought to you, sir, told you that 


32 


Out of the Past. 


I have come to Paris to study. My friends wished me to 
have the protection of your interest because I am alone, 
and I have presented the letter because I am in difficulty.'’ 

''I shall be happy to serve you." 

feel obliged to change my pension for one less ex- 
pensive, and I have come, hoping that you may know a 
French family with whom I can board. Perhaps I put 
you to too much trouble^ monsieur." 

‘'Not at all. I will easily find it for you. Are you quite 
alone here?" 

“Quite alone." 

“And you have no fear?" 

“I gee nothing to fear. It is not necessary to notice 
the people one meets in the streets," she answered with 
cool disdain. 

“Have, you been here long ?" 

“For five months; but I know only what any tourist 
knows* of the city. I am playing the violin for pleasure, 
but I may have to make it a profession, and I want to 
find a few pupils." 

He was disappointed. The intrusion of wage-earning 
spoiled the romance which had crept into his mind at 
sight of her. He thought dubiously of the last time he 
had seen Robert at work in his small rooms, not making 
enough money to procure anything beyond his simplest 


Out of the Past. 


33 


necessities, and not all of those. He spoke to her as he 
would to a penitent. 

''My child, this is a serious, an almost impossible task 
for you to undertake. It will require a great deal to live 
properly, even with economy ; and I think you know little 
of that,’’ looking at her white gloves. 

"Oh — those!” she exclaimed with a childlike laugh. 
"I have cleaned them three times. But you are partly 
right. My father has always made me a liberal allow- 
ance, but he is to be married soon — he will send me less.” 

"Why do you not accept the conditions of your life 
and return to your parents?” 

"Accept the conditions?” she repeated. "I think we 
make our own conditions. I cannot see that we are bound 
to a treadmill because our fathers knew no better.” 

"If physical conditions seem trifling, there are moral 
conditions which you cannot set aside so easily. Does 
not your father need you?” 

"I thought he did,” she answered with a sudden rush 
of tears which she quickly brought under control and dis- 
dained to notice. "But my father prefers some one else 
to me, and my mother has been dead only a year. No 
moral obligation rests upon me.” 

She looked at the priest proudly, and he suddenly re- 


34 


Out of the Past. 


membered that to her he was not a spiritual guide; he 
was only a man in an unmanly black gown. 

you will allow me, I will call upon you in a day or 
tv/o, when I have found a suitable family.” 

She rose and extended her hand cordially. 

‘‘It is indeed good of you to take the trouble. I do not 
believe the letter m^eant very much. It is all pure kind- 
ness on your part.” 

“You are mistaken. I am doing only my duty.” 

“I am equally obliged to you,” she said quietly, and 
went away with an indescribable distinction of bearing 
which strongly impressed Benedict. He shrugged his 
shoulders as he returned to his room, thinking, “What an 
impossible task to overcome that independence of spirit 
and bring it within lines of submission to the church.” 

Rose Lloyd was but a girlish woman, young and im- 
pulsive. On returning to her pension, before removing 
her hat, she wrote a short, characteristic note. 

“My dear, dearest father: 

“How can you break my heart so by putting some one 
else in our home in place of my dear, beautiful mother? 
Don’t you remember how she went about the house sing- 
ing, and how she thought of the happiness of every one 
and remembered all the little things you liked and would 
never let any one else even darn your socks because they 


Out of the Past. 


35 


might have knotty places? Don't you remember how 
pretty she was and how she shone at the Inauguration 
Ball? No, I cannot go home to your wedding. It is all 
wicked. You are as much married to mother now as you 
were before she died. 

''Do not think I love you no longer because I say these 
things, that seem so undutiful. My heart aches for my 
mother and I cannot help it. 

"Did you ever think she is looking at you? She often 
seems so near\o me that she makes me turn about, hop- 
ing that I shall find her sweet face beside me. You love 
her, too, father. Tell me you love her still. 

"Your loving, lonely daughter, Ros^.''^ 

She sealed the note with a sigh, inclosing the tears 

¥ 

which had fallen on the page unnoticed. Her letter 
posted, she returned to her room to reconsider her posi- 
tion. 

She was no longer mistress of her father's house; no 
longer heiress to his wealth. Her welcome home would 
depend upon hypocritical behavior. Her future would 
be made by the caprice of a woman she had never seen, 
whom she naturally distrusted. 

On the following afternoon Benedict called to say that 
a friend of his living up on Avenue Jena would be pleased 
to take Rose into her home for six francs a day. 

Rose walked a short distance with Benedict to a house 


36 


Out of tlie Past. 


nearly opposite the Place des Etats Unis. It was low 
and white and prettily carved, with a large door opening 
in the centre upon a hall, long, and somewhat furnished. 

An old garden could be seen through the glass door at 
the end of the hall, and several other doors opened upon 
it at irregular intervals, one of them masking a staircase. 
As Rose stood in the door-way a tall man stepped aside, 
looking with interest in her face. It was Robert, bound 
for rehearsal. Bowing to Benedict, he passed out. 

Rose was soon settled in her small room at Mme. 
Blanc’s. And with almost equal celerity she secured a 
few pupils and began an existence new to her. 

Her days were so busily engaged that at first she did 
not notice with any uneasiness the absence of her father’s 
letters. But when three weeks had passed her courage 
wavered. 

A sense of impending misfortune grew in her father’s 
unbroken silence. 

Although Benedict and Robert saw her rarely, they 
both noticed the change that anxiety was working upon 
her. 

Benedict had been reprimanded for his hesitation in 
obeying the orders of his superior, and came one day pre- 
pared to test the religious opinions of his charge. 

She seemed weary and listened to his preamble list- 


Out of tlie Past. 


37 


lessly. Finally she roused herself to pay proper attention. 
Benedict grew eloquent in his tribute to the beauty of 
the Catholic faith. 

'*It seems to me/’ she said at last, ‘‘that you worship 
your church and not your God. You ask what I believe. 
I believe in the commands of Christ which require neither 
churches nor gowns nor public prayer. Those are all I 
believe, monsieur.” She rose, nervously listening to 
the postman’s ring. 

Benedict proceeded to show that the church had been 
founded by St. Peter, disciple of the Christ, and there- 
fore carried with it the radiating power of God, being, 
by the same sequence, the only true church. 

Rose could hear the facteur speaking in the hall and 
made no reply until he was gone. Then she turned a 
pale face to Benedict, saying: 

“It has been proved, I think, that the gospels were not 
written before the second and third centuries, and the 
church was not established until it was wanted as a po- 
litical tool by the Roman government. The early Chris- 
tians were stoned and burned. Their church was the 
open field, their ceremonies were the cries of their hearts.” 

“A letter, ma’mselle,” said Mme. Blanc, closing the 
door after her. 

Seeing her father’s handwriting, she opened the letter, 


58 


Out of the Past. 


forgetting Benedict's presence, and read it through to the 
end. 

Somewhat discomposed by the resistance Rose had de- 
veloped, Benedict had stepped to the window and waited 
until her silence roused him from an uncomfortable rev- 
ery. 

She stood against the wall, looking straight before her 
with blanched face and frightened eyes. 

No words of Benedict could rouse her. 

When he gently took her hand, clasping the crumpled 
letter, she exclaimed: 

‘‘No, no! You shall not!" 

It was Robert who answered Benedict's call, bringing 
the first restorative to be found in the dining-room. In- 
stinctively he knew that evil had befallen Rose. 

She had shrunk from touch of the priest's hand, and 
was holding herself erect against the wall like a tottering 
child when Robert entered. 

Without a word he supported her to a resting-place. 
Benedict stood aside, impatient with his own inefficiency, 
and listened with wonder to Robert's low voice. 

From what unsounded depth of the young man's nature 
rose the ineffable tenderness of look and touch and word 
which won such sweet compliance. Finally on the still- 


Out of the Past. 


39 


ness the voice of Rose struck low and clear with a studied 
care noticed by both men. 

‘‘As I was saying, monsieur, the ceremonies of the early 
Christians were the cries of their hearts. There was 
neither church nor Pope then. There was Christ and the 
love of him in tortured souls — no indulgences — no dogma 
— no confession to man — no sophistry. There were the 
soul and its God. That was Christianity. That should be 
Christianity to-day.'’ 

Suddenly her calmness broke and she turned impul- 
sively to Robert. 

“Is there really then a God — a merciless God who de- 
stroys — an unjust God?" 

Neither man dared answer. 

She looked from one to another appealingly, then rose 
to her feet. 

“I must be my own counselor, I see. I was foolish to 
ask wisdom of men when it is man who destroys. It is 
man who works injustice. But you have been good to 
me, both of you. Thank you very much. I do not mean 
to be pettish — but " 

She looked down at the letter with such sudden creep- 
ing pallor upon her face that Robert moved quickly for- 
ward to save her from falling. She smiled up at him a 


40 


Out of the Past. 


little, and in a few moments went steadily out of the 
room, bowing to them as she closed the door. 

Neither moved for a moment. 

^'What has happened?” asked Robert, sternly. 

“I know no more than you. She received a letter — 
that was all.” 

‘'Then we can do nothing?” 

“Nothing but what she chooses. I think the waters of 
oblivion have closed over the cause for us. We shall 
never know.” 

“I will know!” cried Robert. 

“By what right?” 

Robert made no reply. He went to the door of the 
stair-way. All was still. Seeing Mme. Blanc pass busily 
through the hall he intercepted her. 

“Miss Lloyd is not well, I think. Go to her — not now — 
later.” 

Benedict had come from the drawing-room and nodded 
assent as he hurried from the house, immediately fol- 
lowed by Robert. 

“The saints save us, but these foreigners are frail,” 
she muttered. “There^s nothing I wouldn’t do for her — 
the dear child — pretty as a saint and twice as good. She’s 
the sort for a man to worship. The good father looked 


Out of tlie Past. 


41 


pale — now I wonder — Christ save us; it doesn’t do to 
think.” With that she closed the kitchen door sharply. 

During that day and night Rose sat with the letter on 
her knee, concentrated in thought. 

‘‘My dear Rose,” it ran, “since you prove yourself so 
obdurate and lost to all sense of gratitude, it is well that 
I should tell you the truth about yourself. Having no 
children, Mrs. Lloyd and I took you from a foundling 
asylum and brought you up as our own. It was her de- 
sire that you should know this from the first. It was my 
command that you should not. I did not want you run- 
ning away because you might think yourself free. I 
counted upon you to be the stay of my old age. It will 
be well for you not to ask any particulars of your par- 
entage. 

“Mrs. Lloyd, whom I hoped you would welcome as 
your mother, very sweetly says that if you want a home 
with us you are welcome to it. She is a noble woman, 
and as beautiful as she is noble. She could teach you 
many arts and graces that would embellish you. 

“Trusting that this will reach you safely and that you 
will now see the nonsense of your objections to my mar- 
riage, I am as ever your friend, 

“Thomas Li^oyd.” 

This, then, was the real man she had loved as her 
father ; this was the affection he bore her. 

At first it was a relief to remember that she need not 


42 


Out of the Past. 


return to him nor obey him. She could still nurse the 
comforting belief that her father may have been a man 
of noble mind^ whom she could honor. 

There was a phrase which had been erased from the 
letter. Examining it long and carefully with a magnify- 
ing glass, she at last deciphered the gross lettering, and 
dropped the sheet with a shudder. 

will be well for you not to ask any particulars of 
your parentage. I should be sorry to cause you unnec- 
essary shame and sorrow.'^ 

Rose looked down at the paper in terror. Could there 
be more to come ! After long gazing at it as though fas- 
cinated with its evih she burned it in the candle-flame and 
scattered its ashes into the heavy mist of the cold dawn. 

Mme. Blanc found her crouched by the casement late 
in the morning and thought she had fainted. But, though 
her body was white and almost cold, her mind was busy 
with its problem, her heart was beating with anguish. 

Rose Lloyd, she thought, a foundling of shame whose 
place among rightful men and women hung upon secrecy 
or a lie — this, the real Rose Lloyd. 

There could be no home-going. She could not face 
the misery of her position as a disgraced object of char- 
ity. She must bury her secret with all she had loved. 

A shamed existence was what she felt her life to be in 


Out of the Past. 


43 


the first hours of yielding to the extreme conditions im- 
posed upon her. Shame and wrong had risen out of the 
beginnings of her life and claimed her as striped with 
their stain. Her fervid imagination, at work upon her 
overwrought mind, saw them stretch their gaunt arms 
nearer and nearer to her until she would have cried aloud. 

Her eyes refused the relief of tears. Her figure drooped 
like a wind-broken flower. The days passed, one like an- 
other, until their monotony grew to have a voice whisper- 
ing in the silences, an unnamed companion strangely 
piteous. A dull prostration took possession of her and 
the days grew into months. 


CHAPTER IV. 


what use their battling? Their nature’s converge hy- 
menward like rivers down deep water-courses. Give them let.” 

—Old Play. 

On a day in December, Robert sought Benedict and 
asked to sit with him high in the tower, where he had 
woven so many wreaths of fair fancies. Here he could 
smoke and Benedict could stretch his length in a deep 
embrasure. 

Far below extended the city, and out through clear 
vastness hung the rim of the horizon set in a mist of 
opals. The last months of separation had added a keen 
personal appreciation to their relations. They were glad 
to be alone in silence. 

'Ts life in the world still fair to you?’’ asked Benedict, 
dreamily, at length. 

‘‘Yes — it lures me into forgetfulness of my bugbears. 
There is saneness in its struggles and interests.” 

“Little time for brooding, I suppose.” 

“No time at all. Here a rehearsal, there a lesson, now 
a concert, next a call, then the great body of work for 
supremacy.” 

“You are working for fame?” 


Out of tlie Past. 


45 


am not sure what it is I work for. Supremacy over 
other men, I think. It would be the same in any field for 
which I had a talent. I think I should like to land in 
politics, but this will do for the present. It is full of ad- 
venture. The only quarrel I have with it is that even 
moderate success seems to displace one from ordinary 
life in the imagination of most people. What is the use 
of that?’' 

“Then you don't like hero-worship?" 

“Not of this sort. It is not the genuine hero-rever- 
ence which is the due of great men. It makes one feel 
small." 

“What would you like?" 

“To be let alone like other men." 

Benedict smiled. “That may come some day, my son. 
Then you will wonder what's wrong with the world. But 
this struggle for supremacy puzzles me. I thought that 
art itself was your mainspring." 

“No. If it were I would be my own audience and live 
by teaching. Whenever I hear a violinist of note, I mark 
all his perfections, intending to outdo them or, rather, to 
outdo him. I have a duel on my hands with every man 
above me." 

“Egotist !" cried Benedict. 

“I know it. But that is the way I was fashioned." The 


46 Out of tlie Past. 

fall of Robert’s voice to a low tone when most serious 
came always as a surprise even to Benedict. ‘‘And still,” 
he continued, more softly, ‘'there is one person with whom 
I can never struggle, be life as long as it may, one per- 
son whom I can never rival — just one person in the 
world.” 

“The woman you love,” said Benedict, promptly. Rob- 
ert nodded in the silence through which they continued 
their thoughts. 

“Has she already come?” 

“N-no ; but she will come soon ; and I am afraid.” 

“Afraid?” echoed Benedict, incredulously. 

“Seriously and deeply afraid. What rights have I — 
what position ? Shall I ask her to exchange her name for 
such as mine? No. Can I hold my nature in complete 
control and never once call upon her unconsciously? 
Hardly — I am not a god. And, if she is the woman of 
life for me, then I am the man of her life. Can I trust 
to the littleness I am to save her from finding love in her 
heart? Scarcely possible. The greater she is by nature 
the more likely she is to stoop. In all this I am afraid. I 
seem to be preparing a catastrophe. I shall love but once 
— I wish with all my soul it could be put off !” 

“It is a strange thing for you to be afraid, Robert Dins- 

99 


more. 


Out of the Past. 


47 


"I know it. But it is not for myself. It is for her. I 
am afraid for her.’’ 

''Dream fears,” murmured Benedict. "You should not 
heed them.” 

"I must. They are the shadow of Truth — a truth in- 
exorable — born with me, to go down to my grave with 
me. I have no right to the love of any woman.” 

"Ah — this, then, is the devil pursuing you !” exclaimed 
Benedict, rising vigilantly erect. "Let us look at the trou- 
ble in the light of fact, not in the moonshine of fears. All 
evidence goes to show that you are a legitimate son. There 
is but one fact against it, and that can be explained easily 
by one of many possible accidents, such as the world’s 
diary shows a crowd daily. Had your father fallen ill 
in a distant land he might have been forced to wait until 
the traces of his wife and child had disappeared — one in 
death, the other within the walls of a secluded sisterhood. 
In any case, he would have searched at the wrong ad- 
dress (the one in Paris, which your mother did not give 
Louise), and your mother’s letter giving him her new ad- 
dress is the one we found without any superscription. 
Even the reference to secrecy in her letter, which at first 
seemed damning to me, is explicable upon other grounds, 
such as a runaway marriage — a union of which you would 
be a natural result with your fiery nature and high ideals 


48 


Out of tlie Past. 


and ridiculous intolerance, your talents and intense affec- 
tions; all these can be but the product of an unusual 
union. No mediocrity of persons or conditions had a 
hand in that. I would be willing to stake my future that 
you are legitimate. I only wish I could do it and settle 
the wretched business.’’ 

‘'I recognize you in that,” interrupted Robert; but he 
failed to recognize Benedict in what followed and stared 
at him with changing color. 

‘‘There is another side to this question which cannot 
be evaded by a serious man, such as you were meant to 
be, a man who would quaff the best of life before the 
crystal is shattered. You know yourself to be a custodian 
for the race of what is best in you, for which you must 
give an accounting in the course of time — a few score 
years. You know that though there may be many above 
you in the grading of men, there is beneath you a horde 
unworthy a place beside you, low in their instincts, mea- 
gre in their attainments, who carelessly and wantonly 
people the earth until the current of life grows brackish 
with the stagnation which polutes its sources. These 
creatures propagate. You, and such as you, reserve your 
forces. You may live at greater ease in life, but at death 
you have lost your opportunity. You have forfeited your 
place among the forces of the universe. You are extinct. 


Out of the Past. 


49 


To another I might not say these things. To you, I say — 
you have within you powers which belong to the race and 
not to yourself, powers which should come to fruitage, 
not in you nor yet in your son, but a hundred years from 
now in one whom your country will need, in whom your 
dreamy ideals will be great realities. This you cannot 
evade.’’ 

Robert looked the priest in the eyes with a mist gath- 
ering before his own, while the blood pounded in his 
temples. They stood thus, the wedge driven home, until 
Robert turned aside and Benedict said : 

‘T have distressed you. But you will forget and you 
will make your decision upon other grounds. My words 
will not come between you and the woman you love. You 
will forget them. But let this clear away now some vital 
misconceptions.” 

Robert found further talk impossible. He silently took 
his leave and slowly left the tower of his dreams. 

At first this conversation was much in his thoughts, 
but it gradually faded into the background, and at last 
disappeared over his horizon, which was constantly 
changing with the swift passage of events. 

Spring was bursting the buds of the sunny, sheltered 
garden at Mme. Blanc’s when Robert begged for an 


50 


Out of the Past. 


audience with Rose under the green, blushing on twigs 
and waving vines. 

At the time of the prostration which had fallen upon 
Rose after Thomas Lloyd’s letter, Mme. Blanc had in- 
sisted upon her taking a large room opening from her 
suite, and it was from there that Rose came to join Robert 
in the garden. 

As they faced each other, the heart of one leaped in its 
course with the shock of life and expansion. Rose stood 
silent in a lofty gentleness. 

‘T have asked to see you that I might beg you to be 
present at my debut to-morrow at the Cirque d’Hiers.” 

‘T am so glad for you.” 

‘'Thank you ^ but may I hope you will be present?” 

‘T — I do not know, monsieur. I have gone nowhere 
for many months. I am not sure of my courage.” 

“Do but lend me your courage for a few hours and I 
will find you interest.” 

“My interest will be there, I assure you.” 

“But I would so much prefer a glimpse of your face 
to a distant thought from you. I am not wholly unsel- 
fish; I am hoping for the inspiration you can be to me 
to-morrow — if you will.” 

“Indeed, there can be no inspiration for you in me, 


Out of the Past. 


51 


since there is not enough there even for myself. I am a 
beggar in art, monsieur/’ 

''Beggars in art wear crowns in the end/’ 

"Crowns of thorns, perhaps, without the saintship to 
lend them grace.” 

"For all your scorn of the beggar in art, I would rather 
wear his rags than the whole skin of a clerk,” said Robert, 
meditatively. 

"Yet a clerk may happen to be blessed with a mind be- 
yond his condition.” 

"Then he is a beggar, indeed. To possess a mind be- 
yond your condition is to live within the gates of the 
Inferno. No — no ! Give me freedom and vast power to 
enjoy the world’s beauty. Give me the longing to add 
to that beauty. Give me the hope of success in that 
longing.” 

Rose remained silent, stirred by his enthusiasm. 

"But you do not say that you will help me to-morrow,” 
pleaded Robert. 

"It cannot help you much to have so poor a thing as 
myself lost in an audience of many hundreds — one mind 
more to be swayed.” 

Robert looked down at her feet. 

"But if I could stir your heart I should have stirred 


all.” 


52 


Out of the Past. 


She remembered to have felt the strange quality of that 
low voice before when its caressing power had been 
compelling, and she vaguely wondered whether resist- 
ance to it would be successful. 

''I will go, monsieur. I have no reason to refuse your 
courtesy. But I beg of you not to count upon me for 
even a passing breath of inspiration. I am so frightfully 
negative now,'' she added, apologetically. 

‘'Do you not suppose a magnet must always seem nega- 
tive to itself? I will not thank you. I will show you 
what I mean to-morrow. Father Benedict will call for 
you. I hope it will not prove too tiresome an outing." 

He bowed ceremoniously and left her standing bare- 
headed in the sunny garden, with a faint color rising to 
her shell-like face, the fairest memory to him. 

On the morrow Benedict called for her in a carriage, 
and as they rolled down the Elysee in the golden sun- 
burst of spring. Rose thought that life had never been so 
fresh and sweet and enjoyment had never been so keen. 

Her spirits leaped to the sunshine; her heart went out 
to the children playing down the long avenues. She 
could have stopped to revel in Policinell in every nasal 
twanging booth; she could have kissed the flowers in 
every tiny plot and watched the tumbling fountains with 
any babe in the sauntering throng! 


Out of the Past. 


S3 


Spring was in her heart again. The love of beauty 
flooded over her sorrow like a freshening tide over blis- 
tering rocks. 

Seated in the concert halb the first stroke of the drums 
in the orchestra was a gladdening shock and fillip to her 
imagination, which stirred a host of thoughts that en- 
livened her face to exquisite beauty. 

Robert came into the box and sat back in the shadow 
where he could watch the audience. But no lover of 
beauty could look beyond Rose to the host of ordinary 
faces crowding the circular audience chamber. He 
thought he could adore such a face, or, better still, could 
worship before it as before a shrine and make it the in- 
termediary between his soul and heaven. What unex- 
pected waves of expression passed over its lovely con- 
tours ; how sweet were its soft lines and its brilliant eyes ; 
how exceedingly the soul within must rejoice in its taber- 
nacle. 

Rose was leaning over the balustrade of the box with 
parted lips and eager solicitude when Robert stood out 
upon the small dais which was placed well before the 
orchestra and nearly in the centre of the auditorium. 

She smiled upon him — and that was how Robert Dins- 
more stormed the audience at his debut with Lamoureux. 


54 


Out of the Past. 


He cared nothing for its dictum to begin with. He was 
playing to Rose, and spreading before her keen appre- 
ciation every shade of art he possessed. The impetuosity 
of the first movement in the concerto he played was for 
her; the delicacy of treatment and tenderness of feeling 
in his adagio were for her; the elan and the magnificent 
breadth with which he delivered the finale sought her as 
their goal. The incense of a hidden love theme floated 
' over the throng, hidden as well to him as to her. 

The throng knew none of it. Each took to himself 
after his nature such beauty as compelled him, and every 
individual realized that a star was rising in the morning 
of its glory and drank the freshness of its dawn in deep 
silence. 

When the ordeal was over, the wild enthusiasm of the 
audience made but slight impression upon Robert. He 
was now a prey to the most extreme diffidence and 
dared not lift his eyes to the box where Rose sat, bright 
with excitement. She waited through the next number 
for him to appear, then dispatched Benedict in search of 
him. Yet, when he came, she said nothing, but shyly 
held out her hand to him. 

He bent low over it and lightly kissed it in the French 
expression of reverence. But the action was unaccus- 
tomed to Rose, and when he raised his eyes he found 


Out of the Past. 


55 


her face blanched and still. He examined her in silence 
and instantly left the building. 

Robert gave up his studio and begged of Mme. Blanc 
the small room which had belonged to Rose, pleading 
the necessity for economy, though his income had risen 
to a figure which was the despair of all other young 
artists in the field. But Mme. Blanc did not know that. 

Rose had not seen Robert since his triumphant debut, 
and the tenth day was dying, dying in the stately colors 
of a capricious spring day, when, going down the stairs, 
she met Robert ascending to the second floor with his 
violin under his arm, a bundle of books in one hand and 
a large cluster of roses in the other. He promptly sat on 
the step before him and eyed her quizzically. 

''Good-morning, Miss Lloyd,’' he said, with the air of 
a boy caught in a scrape, "if you will deign to take these 
roses, I will remove my hat and pay proper reverence to 
my betters.” 

"I fear your reverence must be small if you need doff 
your hat to make it felt, monsieur.” 

"It is not for your feeling that I would take it off, 
but for my own comfort, since my reverence becomes 
so great at sight of you that it pains me.” 

Under cover of their laugh, she mechanically took his 


roses. 


56 


Out of the Past. 


''There!’’ he cried, as he lifted his hat from his head, 
"now I can breathe, and I leave my roses in your hands 
for a great service. It is quite something to be rescued 
from suffocation, I assure you.” 

"You make me too much your debtor.” 

"It is I who am your debtor for all my recent suc- 
cesses.” 

"Monsieur!” she cried with remonstrance. 

"I fear the truth is unpalatable. But your presence 
at my debut was worth untold gold. It was glory and 
fame to me all in one short half hour.” 

"You bewilder me,” she murmured from the roses in 
which she had buried her face. "You speak from a 
fairyland of upside-down. It is I who gloried, gloried 
more in my friend than in the success he won. It is I 
who have to thank you for an unusual, a deep pleasure. 
Indeed, I do thank you,” she cried, holding out both 
hands. 

The violin and the books and the hat and the roses 
found themselves comfortably on the floor together at 
the head of the stair as he took her hands slowly. 

"And what are you doing here?” Rose demanded. 

"I am looking for my room. It is somewhere in the 
sky, I believe.” 


Out of the Past. 57 

'^But you will never get there this way. There are no 
stop-overs on the road to heaven.” 

‘‘That depends upon what angel comes in the way. I 
have an interesting score to show, if I may ; a new work 
by Lalo. Do you lunch to-morrow at half after twelve? 
I will be there.” 

He started away, but returned to say soberly : 

‘T beg your pardon. Miss Lloyd. I have not asked 
permission to lunch with you.” 

^Please come,” she replied. 

To lunch with Rose meant to sit apart by a window 
whose casements opened upon the quiet, spring-scented 
garden — to be served by pretty Babette, not fifteen, with 
saucy black eyes, and a complete subjugation to Rose. 
It meant to drift away on a sea of changing thoughts 
which touched, now far, now near, with a freedom possi- 
ble only to minds nicely attuned to the world’s interests. 

Robert prolonged every pretext of the dejeuner, and 
afterward spread upon the table the score of the vol- 
uminous new work with a deliberateness which irritated 
Mme. Blanc, whose French sense of propriety had been 
severely tantalized. 

Those were days of joyous daring to Robert; days of 
stress to Rose. She must constantly meet him and must 
constantly hear the splendid abandon of his playing. 


58 


Out of the Past. 


Worst of all, she must sink herself to the most common- 
place level to save her conscience. Her resolution was 
hard beset between his ever-encroaching nature and her 
own. But the habit of her mind held like a storm-an- 
chor, and her deep-seated instinct of self-control steadied 
her, even when her faculties deserted her, as they some- 
times treacherously did. 

Rose found the struggle increasing to a tension which 
she could not support, and quietly prepared to leave the 
field. 

June had turned Paris to paradise when she made her 
final arrangements to go to a small watering-place un- 
sought by tourists and unfrequented by any one whom 
she would be likely to know, necessarily taking Mme. 
Blanc into the confidence of her new address. 

It was the last night before she was to leave. 

Robert had gone to an engagement. Mme. Blanc 
was out upon a gossiping tour. 

Having finished her packing, Rose took up her violin 
and, for the first time since Robert’s advent, played with 
unmuted strings. Her bed-room opened from Mme. 
Blanc’s private sitting-room, which extended the length 
of the house from the street to the garden. Rose 
walked through it, playing in the half light. 


Out of the Past. 


59 


Robert's engagement had been an early one at a soiree, 
which he immediately left after having played his part. 

As he neared Mme. Blanc's on the wide, silent street, 
he was startled by the deep, full voice of a violin from the 
windows, open to the freshness of early night, and he 
stopped to listen beneath them. 

With a man’s sublime egotism, he had never given 
much consideration to her playing, and he listened in 
bewilderment. There was a quality in its grave sad- 
ness which moved to tears, a quality so poignant and 
pleading, so sweet and caressing, that it drew him nearer 
to her than he had ever been drawn before. 

He entered the house quietly and went slowly up the 
stairs. The door of Mme. Blanc’s sitting-room was 
open, and Rose was walking back and forth playing a 
Bruch adagio, which is sad and unresigned at best. It 
sobbed from her strings with a passion of grieving which 
held Robert by the door against his judgment. It 
seemed like a death when the voice cried itself into si- 
lence. Crossing to her, he exclaimed: 

‘‘What is it. Miss Lloyd ? What hurts you so ?’' 

“Nothing — nothing.” 

In stepping back she entered the light from the win- 
dow, and Robert saw that her face was wet with tears 
still falling. They seemed weightier than a world. 


6o 


Out of the Past. 


‘'Let me share it.” 

“I cannot. Do please go.” 

“But how can I go? You are in trouble.” 

“No, monsieur.” 

“Yes, I feel it as I have never felt any sorrow of my 
own.” 

“If you would be kind, you will go away; you will 
forget. It is a woman's privilege to weep for trivial 
things.” 

How cold she could be. Robert stood silent, feeling 
in bitterness how near him the breath of communion was 
passing. She finally broke the silence sadly, but so 
guardedly that her very sadness seemed to place a dis- 
tance between them. 

“What I said was not true, monsieur. I was unhappy 
and lonely. Life seemed a task. There seemed no 
hope in it; no satisfaction, not much joy — it seemed just 
a round of necessity. And so you found me crying, 
monsieur.” 

Her proud constraint smote him ; he answered sud- 
denly, as though to some unspoken command and, to 
the beat of his low, vehement words, the funeral of her 
happiness seemed to pass in painful procession. 

“I could have* loved you. I did love you. But I will 
not. You shall have your way — you, and the chance 


Out of tlie Past. 


6i 


that made me. Chance! The distorted shadow of a 
God-like law; that is my tutelary. Under its watery, 
shifting star I was born, and my life will shift with it like 
sand in the tides, sucked up in one to be snatched back 
in another. Yet I must live it. I will lead it honorably ; 
there shall be that grain of gold in the silt, though it 
enrich no one. In ugly truth, I am so far beneath what 
you should honor that I ought to apologize for having 
shaped events so that I might know you. I shall thank 
God for the memory of it. The thought of it will come 
to me in hard times, like water to a man thirsting. Oh, 
why did they not leave out my heart and soul when they 
made me ! It would have been easy 

Silence rose between them in the darkness, an in- 
tolerable barrier which maddened Robert beyond endur- 
ance. 

‘^Rose!’^ he cried. ^^Rose!^’ 

There was no answer. Nothing met his hands where 
she had stood. 

He waited until the sound of Mme. Blanc's key grated 
through the halls. Then he went away, and in the 
morning he found that Rose had gone. 


CHAPTER V. 


‘‘So she set him adrift on a sea of doubt 
And never a word said she, 

Till a Hell-dame tried his troth to rout 
And the wind blows wide and free/' 

— Rhyme of the Second Mate. 

‘‘Monsieur ! Oh, monsieur V cried Babette through the 
door one July morning, as she set the beaker of hot water 
down by the crack. “Come here just one little moment. 
I have something to say. Never mind your dressing- 
gown — Pm not afraid and madame is coming. Mon 
Dieu, but you are slow.’' 

Wrapping himself like a mummy Robert looked 
through the crevice. 

“Yes, Babette.” 

“I know something you would give your eyes to know,” 
she whispered. 

“I do not doubt it. But why wake me up for that? It 
is not worth while.” 

“Oh, yes; I know. You men always want the best of 
everything every minute of the time. If you sleep, the 
world must be dumb. If you eat, Paris must roll up its 


Out of the Past. 


63 


sleeves to find you dainties. And, presti, if you love, 
nothing will serve but the sweetest creature under the 
sun. Fie!” 

‘‘In the name of man I beg your pardon, Babette. But 
my coffee grows cold and the steam grows less around 
that beaker down there. What is it?” 

“I know the address of Miss Rose,” she whispered. 

Robert stood to attention like a man suddenly placed 
on parade. 

“Shall I tell you?” 

“Did Miss Rloyd give her permission?” 

“Of course not, stupid I She knows nothing about it.” 

“Then I must refuse.” 

“Hey!” cried Babette in dismay. “You mean it?” 

“That I do. And you ought to be well punished for 
your knavery.” 

“Then you don’t deserve her. You are not worth both- 
ering about. My faith ! A man of sawdust ! Do you 
suppose she would tell you? She went away just to see 
whether you would follow. I know.” 

“No, child; you do not know. Miss Lloyd is not like 
you. If she wished me to go to her she would say it 
before all the world. But she knows I cannot go to her. 
I have not the right.” 


64 


Out of the Past. 


''But, monsieur, are you then married Babette said, 
fearfully. 

‘'No — I never shall be — that is all. Now run away like 
a good girl.’’ 

When she had retreated he called her back. 

"Did you say that Miss Lloyd is well and happy?” 

"I do not know,” Babette answered, scared into the 
truth. "But I am sure she is not. She — she loves you, 
monsieur.” Waiting for nothing more disagreeable, she 
threw her apron over her head and clattered down to the 
court in a storm of tears. After that Robert avoided 
Babette, played more incessantly and held his heart in 
closer durance than ever. 

It was July in Paris and it was well for Robert to hold 
himself in durance. The opera had closed, throwing 
upon the boulevards and upon the provinces an army of 
artists, hungry for money, hungry for fame, but most 
hungry for pleasure. Among them was a ballet dancer 
who was anomalously rich and lived in a hotel on the 
Boulevard Haussman — piquant Saline, brilliant Saline 
with the trenchant wit — whose gay face was never seen 
but in the most approved places where honesty unwit- 
tingly elbows the world which lives in half light ; Saline, 
who had come from a mountain home with a voice and a 
talent and an ambition for grand opera, and who, seeing 


Out of the Past. 


65 


the ghost of failure and penury at her feast, had fled 
from it to the board of wealth and ease, gained at little 
cost. 

With her there was always a something different from 
the rest, which lent her greater success — an indefinable 
reserve which clung to her from the air of her mountain 
childhood. It showed itself in an untamable indepen- 
dence which threatened at times to fling her from the 
heights of success, only to raise her giddily beyond them 
still higher up. 

There was no doubt that she could retain that hotel so 
long as she wished. But how long would that be? 
There were bets upon it. Saline had been showing dis- 
quieting symptoms of late which were anxiously watched 
by those who tried to imitate her and who could not think 
complacently of foregoing the supper at her hotel. 

She treated M. Vignaud with almost open contempt 
and M. Vignaud would surely resent it in time. Saline 
had contracted the ill habit of day-dreaming, and she re- 
turned in her day-dreams to the mental attitude of her 
young life, free among the mountains and pure as its air. 
Whether her day-dreams had come before or after hav- 
ing seen Robert Dinsmore at opera rehearsals, she neither 
knew nor cared. She saw in him a man fit to love a 
woman and to keep his love as something to be neither 


66 


Out of the Past. 


flaunted nor sullied. In this mood she despised the men 
of her circle and treated them very badly. 

One night at M. Vignaud’s hotel, when the supper was 
nearly over and her guests clamored to be amused, she 
rose quietly in her place looking soberly into the stained 
bottom of her glass. 

''Sing ! Improvise ! Make our hearts light cried M. 
Vignaud from the other end of the table, and Saline gave 
him a long, quiet glance. 

"It is coming,’' whispered one. 

"Is she not magnificent,” muttered another. "What a 
pose !” 

"Hush, she is about to say; something.” 

Placing her glass on the table she began in a low voice : 

"Friends, I sing you Love — Love whom you have never 
known, into whose eyes you have never looked — the love 
of the pure.” 

"Tiens ! This is droll,” said one under the uneasy stir. 

"And so is life,” she retorted, turning to the speaker, 
"and we know only the shabby half of it.” 

"Would she preach?” interpolated Yvette with a shrug. 

"I could not if I would,” Saline answered reproachfully. 
"You know it well, friend.” After that there were no 
more interruptions. "I would sing the love which we 
and such as we have never known.” Her eyes wandered 


Out of the Past. 


67 


about the circle of expectant faces and the men grew ex- 
ceedingly uncomfortable. 'We nose about the path 
where it has passed, like hounds on the track of a being 
out of their class. .We deck ourselves in its cast-oif 
clothes and mimic what we think to be its mode. But is 
there one of us who would not flee from it like a pest if 
to be true to it meant to be poor? Let us not deceive 
ourselves; we have not known love. I have read of an 
affection of the mind and heart which brings peace to the 
tired brain, peace to the soul. Is there ever peace for us ? 
I would sing that love, but I cannot. I do not know it. 
And you!’' she exclaimed, turning with sudden passion 
upon the men, "you cannot know it either. You are more 
selfish than we are — worse than we are. But I tire you, 
and none of you understand me. I will sing you what 
I know to have happened.” Sitting back in her chair 
carved like a throne, and nestling her head in a hollow of 
its carving, she looked away over the heads of her guests 
and presently began to sing, half remembering, half im- 
provising her verses : 

"Far in the slumbering hills, stands a hut made of stone 
and of wood. 

Where the wild, rocking winds wreak their wills, where 
the menacing crags silent stood. 

When a woman of sweet, laughing face, came to dwell 
'neath their grim, stately grace. 


68 


Out of tlie Past. 


Bleak struck the winds of December, black hung the 
clouds o’er her head, 

With the coming of life to remember and the dread of not 
winning their bread. 

For the hovering wings of Death’s angel stretch from 
heaven to earth o’er the crags. 

Day after day passed, she singing through paths of the 
echoing forest, 

And night upon night heard the ringing of bells in the 
cavernous west. 

Where the souls of the forest take refuge with Death in 
the hour of their rest. 

Strong were the arms that she loved, tender the heart of 
Craig Badeau, 

Till the blight crept along his great body and hope for 
his life flickered low, 

And the babe in its cradle of fir boughs crooned soft to 
the oncoming woe. 

Still, through the shadowy byways, the mother passed 
oft with a song; 

Till the brown on her brow turned to silver and the babe 
grew to maidenhood strong. 

Took her way in the world for its silver and passed, God 
knows where, in the throng. 

And the mother with tearless eyes waits there, afar in 
the slumbering hills. 

For the crooning that laughed in its cradle, for the soul 
that to love is now dead. 

Hushed are the winds o’er her loving and still wait 
Death’s wings o’er the crag.” 


Out of the Past. 


69 


Yvette had crept to the singer’s chair with eyes full of 
tears, and, after the sombre silence which fell upon them 
all, she asked timidly : 

''Is she waiting for you still. Saline?” 

The woman turned brusquely from her aesthetic vision 
to answer: 

"Yes — she has everything she wants.” 

Yvette shrank back, murmuring: "If I had such a 
mother I would not stay here one hour.” But the words 
were not heard in the clamor which again broke out to 
relieve the unprecedented seriousness of the situation. 

"A dance ! A dance. Saline ! Come, this is unkind.” 

She petulantly ordered the table cleared. M. Vignaud 
held out his hand for her satin-clad foot and she sprang 
upon the polished surface of the table as lightly as a moth, 
to glide and whirl there like nothing else but Saline, the 
moth dancer. 

With all this Robert had no conscious connection, but 
Saline had fixed tipon him the gyves of an unthwarted 
will. For tne first time she had come in contact with one 
who would not lower himself to her level nor abate one 
jot the rigor of his hardy nature. Somewhere in the un- 
lighted places of her character, a vivid desire took life to 
possess what his nobler life represented. 

She cared little for position, believing that the lives of 


70 


Out of the Past. 


so-called good people must be deadly tiresome. But to 
possess his loyalty seemed a happiness beyond all others 
to the woman who had never been loyal, never having 
been loyally treated. 

The mode of Saline’s life was not likely to bring her 
in Robert’s vicinity. But there must be ways, and Saline 
set herself to find them. The only one she could discover 
was through M. Vignaud, who knew Jean d’Escarte, Rob- 
ert’s former companion when they had rented rooms to- 
gether early in the winter. She learned that his friend 
was to give a fete at his mother’s house on the 14th of 
July. Robert would undoubtedly be there. M. Vignaud 
would be invited and must take her. M. Vignaud refused 
flatly. But he was so mercilessly treated that he yielded. 

On the night of the 14th M. Vignaud escorted Saline to 
the fete in an unenviable state of mind. He was com- 
mitting an unpardonable breach of etiquette and, even 
worse than that, he found Saline changed to so irreproach- 
able a being on the surface that he knew there was deviltry 
within. She could be amazingly beautiful, and to-night 
she looked a veritable grande dame. It relieved his 
anxiety somewhat, though he was not sure that she was 
not meditating a coup de foudre. 

M. and Mme. Vignaud were announced. None of the 
ladies had ever seen her and received her with a flutter of 


Out of the Past. 


71 


admiration. The men turned to look at Vignaud and 
soon gathered in groups in the foyers. Saline recognized 
none of them, passing on serenely to be presented to Mme. 
d'Escarte, who, being a widow, was supported by her son. 
As Jean d’Escarte saw her slowly approaching, his face 
became suffused with heat. So this was Mme. Vignaud. 
Should he present her? How avoid it? His mother was 
whispering : 

‘‘What a surprising creature, Jean ! I used to see such 
beauty at court, but never since we have lived under a 
Republic.’" 

“There is a very good reason why not,” muttered Jean. 
The young man received Vignaud frigidly, saying simply : 

“This is Mme. Vignaud, I understand.” 

Saline dared not cast a glance at him. She received 
Mme. d’Escarte’s cordial greeting and watched the gentle 
manner in which the lady congratulated M. Vignaud upon 
his marriage. 

“We never expected it of you, mon ami. You are 
wise.” And then turning to Saline, “Your husband is an 
old-time friend, a much valued friend. I rejoice in his 
happiness, and I feel quite assured of your own.” 

Saline blushed appropriately, but did not trust herself 
to speak. All was so quiet and controlled that she felt 
muted, not daring to raise her voice. Yet she had time 


72 


Out of the Past. 


to think : ‘'After all, none of these splendid women know 
the men of their own families. It is we who know them.’^ 
And this charitable thought enabled her to hold her head 
so proudly that many a woman truly great in prestige 
paled before her. 

M. Vignaud was congratulated upon all sides, to his 
intense discomfiture, but he was congratulated by none 
so heartily as by Robert, who thought, “At last in his 
long career, this man has committed an honorable action.’’ 
Seeing that none ventured to entertain her and recogniz- 
ing the embarrassment of Saline’s position, Robert went 
to her rescue, relieving M. Vignaud and placing her out 
of the throng. 

“See what it is,” smiled Saline, “to attain a position to 
which one is not born. These people all seem unnatural 
to me and I cannot recognize the men at all — they behave 
so differently. Do you suppose the women are always so 
tame? But they are beautifully gowned, quite beauti- 
fully. It is like living in a modern play perpetually at 
one of the recherche theatres. They talk very much like 
it.” 

Her topic was cleverly seized. Its frankness and 
naivete were the only means she could have used to inter- 
est Robert, who saw in them a pathetic acknowledgment 
of her difficulties as Mme. Vignaud. 


Out of the Past. 


73 


‘^Tell me what they are all talking about/’ she de- 
manded, sweeping her eyes over the throng. 

‘'That would be interesting to know. There have been 
recent events and scandals among the great people not 
present whom they all know. Most of the women are 
moved by rising virtuosi and some worship at the shrine 
of the new poets. Many are versed in political intrigue 
and are manceuvering this or that favor to gain advance- 
ment for their husbands.” 

“Eh, mon Dieu ! And do none of them talk of love?” 

“N-no. Not in public.” 

“They waste time,” said Saline sententiously. “I can 
improve upon their methods vastly. Now — if I were one 
of them I should say to you, ‘There is but one accident 
to-night which renders the dulness of this place bearable 
— and that is your presence. You shed the very atmos- 
phere of love, and the hearts of women must be staidly 
schooled to run a steady pace when you are near.’ ” 

Robert stared. 

“Faith, you would very much surprise me if you said 
it.” 

“Oh, I could say much more than that, if I were one of 
them. I could say, for instance, ‘Your hand lying on that 
dark surface and shining against it, is fine, febril, supple ; 
if it held my own I could refuse you nothing.’ ” Robert 


74 


Out of the Past. 


rose in confusion. ‘^Tiens! how startled you are. But 
I am not one of them and I didn’t say it of course — 
though I might want to. But let us be sensible as these 
cold creatures are. Our profession makes us too emo- 
tional. Sit down and talk /to me as these people do.” 

Robert was growing nervous. Did she think St. Ce- 
cilia and Terpsichore visited in the same circles? He 
knew that she was shockingly beautiful and that most of 
the men would tell her so in one way or another. But he 
did not propose to, although he was uncomfortably sensi- 
ble of the fact. While he was trying to think of some 
subject of mutual interest, Jean d’Escarte hurried up to 
whisper to him : 

“Don’t waste time here. Come, let me take you to Miss 
Lloyd ; she has asked for you,” 

Robert started to his feet. 

“Here — in this room ?” 

“Yes. My mother met her at the American Ambassa- 
dor’s on the Fourth and she is to play for us to-night. 
She has asked for you.” 

Robert remembered his surroundings sufficiently to 
bow with a murmured apology and followed the direction 
of Jean’s nod. 

“Another debut,” he thought. “I hope; Miss Lloyd is 
not nervous. I wish they would let me play in her stead 


Out of the Past. 


75 


— it is such a beastly sensation to stand before the crowd, 
and I hate their looking at her. Not a man here is fit.'' 

But she was talking pleasantly with several of them, 
tall, cool and gracious as a forest-flower. 

‘'I fear M. d'Escarte interrupted you," she said, as she 
gave him her hand and, turning, Robert saw superb Saline 
alone in full view from where they stood. ‘‘I did not 
know you had arrived when I asked for you and I will 
not detain you. I only wanted to ask if you happen to 
have a mute in some pocket. I have either left or lost 
mine." 

''I always carry my implements," Robert answered, pro- 
ducing the mute, ‘'and as for Mme. Vignaud, whom you 
see, I escorted her there and gave my time to her because 
no one else dared." 

“How strangely you speak." 

“Nevertheless, I speak justly. Now M. Vignaud him- 
self must care for his wife. May I look your instrument 
over to be sure it is ready?" 

Finding nothing out of order, he took Rose to a loung- 
ing corner of the ante-room, placing pillows behind her 
in a restful corner and drawing a chair near. 

For a moment he was overwhelmingly conscious of her 
face as he had seen it in twilight, with the glisten of tears 
upon it, and of the sense of loneliness which had swept 


76 


Out of the Past. 


over him later, when he had found emptiness where she 
had stood grieving. Consciousness of that hour had also 
risen to Rose. But they looked at each other gravely as 
though over an agreement signed and sealed, and both 
tried to forget. Dropping his eyes, he said : 

‘'We have missed you at Mme. Blanc's. The life of the 
house went with you and we feel and behave like resusci- 
tated mummies. Babette threatens to leave if we cannot 
persuade you to us again. We will be very good if you 
will return." 

“You were too good — that was why " 

“Why you left ? I do not understand." 

“I am not good myself — always," she admitted. 

Perhaps it was foolish, but at this small admission Rob- 
ert's heart bounded over the agreement, signed and sealed. 

“Did you go because I worried you ?" 

“I am afraid I did." 

“And you disliked me?" 

“N-no. Oh, please " 

“Please let you alone?" She nodded with embarrass- 
ment, and Robert questioned her eyes, the question dan- 
gerous through which souls come suddenly upon each 
other and quiver in the radiance for one long moment. 
She first drew her glance away with a sense of having 
dipped in a sea of measureless delight, and after that 


Out of the Past. 


77 


neither knew what was said or whether any words lay 
between them. Jean came hesitatingly toward them, hav- 
ing seen that which is unmistakable in the face of a man's 
friend, the sheen of the soul's radiance, the something 
before which every man feels himself small. 

‘‘My mother is coming to ask if you are rested. Miss 
Lloyd, and I am here to ask whether I can help you in 
any way when you are ready to play for us." 

^‘Yes, I am quite rested, thank you — quite rested." 

Robert handed her the case. She soon had been escort- 
ed to her place and Robert had drifted back into the 
crowd to a point from which he could watch her. 

Where had she learned the trick of loving which dis- 
played itself so unexpectedly in the finish of phrases, in 
the soft diminuendos drooping into tender melody half 
audible, in the rush of crescendo with which she mounted 
to a satisfying finish of generous sound, and there paused 
in full tide as though to her heart there could never be an 
ebb. Where had she learned it? Robert dared not ask 
himself. And had he dared, the moment was too full of 
the inexplicable to brook explanations. 

am lost," he sang to himself, ‘'drowned in her. I 
seem to be asleep a million fathoms deep. At least, I 
will not cause her to seem ridiculous. Go home, you in- 


78 


Out of tlie Past. 


fant; the man in you has gone daft. He has the divine 
madness. Oh, Rose, how the god of love sings in you 

Meanwhile Saline had concentrated her faculties in an 
examination of Rose, who was a new specimen of woman- 
hood to her. 

‘‘That is the sort the novels are written about,’’ she 
commented. “I wonder why. She could be more beauti- 
ful if she only knew or cared ; but she could not be more 
entrancing, I will admit. And she plays — mon Dieu, how 
she plays ! What would I not give to dance to her play- 
ing! The world would be at my feet. It shall be done.” 
Saline sprang up and started across the floor with en- 
thusiasm to embrace the young girl, crying, “Brava! 
Brava! Artiste! Virtuose!” But, midway down the room 
d’Escarte met her with an interrogation between his 
brows, and, placing her hand on his arm, he turned her 
into the supper room. 

She flashed her blazing eyes upon him and, at sight 
of her, the servants silently left the room. 

“Why did you stop me?” 

“When you have told me why you have come here I 
will carefully explain why I could not permit you to in- 
trude yourself upon that lady. Shall I do so?” 

“How interestingly prudish! Might I not find a rea- 


Out of the Past. 


79 


son why you also should not intrude upon that lady? 
Shall I carefully explain that to her?'’ 

D'Escarte reddened. ^‘At least I know enough to be 
ashamed of myself. While you ” 

‘‘Ah, I see. You demean yourself in two ways. You 
behave properly when women are so good that 
they force you to it and, when that becomes tiresome — 
um — we are there. And yet your virtue is outraged at 
sight of one of us in your seasons of propriety. Which is 
nearer being honest, do you think, the highway robber or 
the secret felon ? Why am I here ? That is my business, 
my pleasure. Why do you ask yourself to M. Vignaud's 
hotel? That is your business. Between us there is little 
to choose. Do you think I would harm that innocent 
child? A little more and you would make me wish it. 
But, man-scoffer that you are ! — there is one white corner 
in my soul and a pure woman is enthroned there. I wish 
to go away.” 

In all submissiveness and sackcloth of spirit, Jean con- 
ducted her whither she bade him and felt, when she had 
departed, that after all he had a very slight acquaintance 
with virtue, and that he had no understanding whatever of 
women, particularly of the evil sort. 


CHAPTER VI. 


All roads lead on through the Door of Life, and to the good 
all roads are seemly. — Drift of the Border Lands. 

Rose slept little that night, and the next day sought 
her home in the gray house by the sea, hoping that its 
monotonous walls on the sandy waste would revive her 
sense of the true values of her life. She wanted to feel 
its limitations and to be strong in them. 

She wanted to regain oblivion of the joy which had 
been quickened to life against her will, almost without her 
knowledge, in a look. One long, quiet look; that had 
been all. What folly that whole years of life should 
tremble in its irresponsible power! What worse than 
folly that, against her will, joy should still throb where 
her moral determination denied it the right to exist. She 
thought the sea would help her with its beauty and 
grandeur and loneliness. 

But the waste was an alluring glory when she came to 
it at sunset. The irregular gray house wore a welcome 
like some homely, kindly face. And the sea was arch- 
traitor in its long, limpid swell of lovely color and lazy 
motion, as though gladness of being were all, as though 


Out of the Past. 


8i 


the universe knew no law but the law of delight. Over 
all a fresh wanton breeze, sweet with the breath of grasses, 
played from inland in the tenderness of evening. Then 
the stars came. The night song of the heavens echoed in 
faraway diapason to the listening ear of her soul. The 
puritan within her faded into its own shadow to bide its 
time. 

It would be no sin to love, when loving did not harm its 
object or any other being. Had she reasoned — but who 
reasons when the soul has risen from its depths to claim 
the being it knows for its own ? What heart can measure 
the ground it has passed, back to the point before dis- 
closure, and return itself to what it was? 

The house on the sands had no power to hold her to a 
fancied duty. The sea had no voice in its warm, sun- 
kissed level to murmur of super-morality. The sand and 
the sea and the sky were nature, and, to their utter natu- 
ralness, Rose was at last reduced to own the magic of 
the laws of her being. The man and the hour had come. 
They had closed one door of life to her and had opened 
another. 

A week from that day Rose received a scented note 
from Mme. Vignaud asking her to entertain a few guests 
at her house the following night, mentioning a goodly 
sum, and asking her to remain until the following day. 


82 


Out of the Past. 


Rose reached Paris the next evening at eight o’clock 
and drove to the Boulevard Haussman, expecting to be 
late. But the house was quiet and expectant, and she was 
shown to a dressing-room richly appointed, where Mme. 
Vignaud greeted her, taking her wraps and sending away 
the maid. 

''You beautiful little thing,” she exclaimed, framing 
Rose’s face between her hands. "I am so glad you are 
here. No one will come for ages (they are always late, 
and Mimi has quarreled with — but that’s another matter). 
The great thing is, we can talk. It is warm. Will you 
take a sherbet and an iced cup now? Have you dined? 
There will be supper afterward, of course. No wine? 
Then a cup of tea. Now, lie down and rest. You are 
pretty I All the lines of your body are so fine and yet so 
pretty.” 

As Rose sat up very straight Saline exclaimed anx- 
iously : 

"You don’t mind my saying that, do you? It’s true and 
you can’t help it, and you ought really to be thankful. I 
would give my height and what they call my splendor in 
one moment for your fineness — it is so deeply attractive, 
that fineness of yours. Now,” she exclaimed, walking be- 
fore a great mirror, "I haven’t at all what would seem to 


Out of the Past. 83 

me real beauty, if I were a man. It is you have it, and, 
of the two, it is you I should love.'’ 

She turned from the reflection with a grimace and en- 
countered the pair of wide-open eyes fastened upon her. 

‘^You don't like what I say. But it does no harm. I 
am terribly frank, gauche, I know : but it is all true. The 
trouble is we are afraid of the truth. I might be jealous 
of you — ^but, bless you, I am not. I should simply adore 
your beauty very soon — perhaps I do already." 

^'My dear Mme. Vignaud, please do not say such things. 
They are excessively uncomfortable. It seems to me a 
poor topic." 

‘T suppose it is," said Saline, meekly sitting down. 
‘‘May we talk of something else ? How do you like Paris ? 
Are we as bad as you expected? I would really like to 
know. You seem so different from us. Are all Ameri- 
cans like you?" 

“How do you mean?" 

“Are you all serious and self-contained and tantalizingly 
pretty, and do you all tell the truth ?" 

“Why do you think I tell the truth?" 

“You can't help it because — well — because it is you.'’ 

Rose concluded that she had to do with a woman who 
had never left her childhood, but answered as politely as 
she could: 


84 


Out of the Past. 


‘‘American women are very nice and they are simpler 
than you are, perhaps more truthful, but their manners 
are, as a rule, not so pretty/’ 

“You have perfect manners yourself, and that is odd 
in a young girl.” 

Rose was doubtful whether to be amused or ashamed. 
For a time conversation languished, while her hostess 
grew nervous with the feeling that time was passing and 
that her opportunity, too, was passing. Yet she found 
it hard to speak. At last she nervously patted the bed 
near the aristocratic hand resting there and asked slowly : 

“Do you think women who — who are not good are 
very bad?” 

Rose hesitated. 

“I mean bad women,” said Saline, doggedly deter- 
mined to be understood. 

“I think they are pitiful.” 

“Pitiful!” exclaimed Saline, proudly. 

“Yes; pitiful,” insisted Rose, rising quickly to defend 
her standard. “Who loves them? Who shields them? 
Who honors them ? Without these things a woman seems 
better out of the world : she seems to be worth less than 
any other kind of creature.” Saline drew breath quickly. 
“All animals have their place and serve some good end. 


Out of the Past. 85 

But a bad woman — she saps the strength of the race ; bet- 
ter a ghoul that lives on the dead/’ 

‘'Ach !” the woman cried, springing up with her hands 
before her eyes. 

''What is it, madame? Have you a headache?” 

"No — no — a spasm. That is all. Go on, I am wait- 
ing.” 

"There is nothing more.” 

"Nothing more? You would not punish them?” 

"Poor things! How could one punish?” 

"But they are not poor,” Saline excitedly exclaimed. 
"They are rich, petted, better dressed, better cared for 
than good women. Show me as many wives as carefully 
attended.” 

"I hope you are mistaken. But, if you are not mis- 
taken, your nation is waning.” 

Saline stopped to wonder at the dictum and asked an 
explanation. 

"It is very simple. When good women are not first in 
the hearts of men, a nation has already lost its manhood. 
Inertia creeps upon it, and then come disgrace and dis- 
ruption.” 

"How do you know?” 

"There have been other nations before yours and they 
crumbled in the same way.” 


86 


Out of the Past. 


^‘But I thought it was through invading armies and 
that sort of thing/’ 

‘‘A nation of strong men and good women does not 
fear invasion,” said Rose with a touch of scorn. '‘I would 
like to tune my violin, madame.” 

“Certainly. We will go down, but it is still early.” 

“It is nearly ten o’clock.” 

“It does not matter. No one will come, yet.” 

They found the drawing-room ready, the supper-room 
inviting beyond, the servants in their places, but no 
guests. Rose had tuned her violin, and was trying her 
fingers, when a startling clamor of voices rose loudly 
without the hall. 

“Will you go upstairs, please?” said Saline nervously. 
She began to fear the situation and to question whether 
she could make the wild hearts behave. There was much 
laughing and whispering below stairs, and finally a calm 
into which Rose came seeking Saline. The latter, waiting 
to receive her, appreciated the exquisite simplicity of her 
dress and the distinction of her genuine unconscious 
beauty. 

“I am ready, madame.” 

A man was seated at the piano, turning the leaves of 
her music. When she had made her choice, Rose looked 
about her with sudden apprehension, and closed her eyes 


Out of the Past, 


87 


to give herself to her music for comfort. She had twice 
played before she could overcome a sense of strife and 
enigma. She tried to think of other faces than the hard, 
glaring masks which she felt fixed upon her. One of 
them tittered constantly behind her fan, to whom Saline 
moved noiselessly, remarking over the woman’s shoulder : 

''Once more, little fool, and the door will be opened 
for you. See if you can behave like a woman for once.” 
And again to another: "Would monsieur prefer the 
smoking-room? There will be no talking here until 
m’amselle has finished.” So she whipped them into sub- 
mission, and at last the room was quiet. 

Then the strangeness of the company rose upon the 
heated air and filtered back into the imaginations of both 
men and women until, to some, there were voices of de- 
nunciation whispering in the pauses and, to others, the 
terrible phantom of thought arose and demanded en- 
trance to the locked chambers of their brains, where their 
minds were stifling — a rare form of torture. Over their 
heads the breath of the violin passed in unearthly purity, 
and at last all else was still. 

Rose had forgotten them. She had conjured to her 
aid a vision of sunlit sands and heaving sea^. She had 
passed the narrow boundaries of the low and mean into 
the unbounded Land of Dreams, where perfections have 


88 


Out of the Past. 


their birth. Here there was peace, and from her peace 
profound she played to Saline’s wild beasts. 

M. Vignaud entered unnoticed. Standing by the door, 
he looked from Rose to Saline, and glanced attentively 
over the room and back again, then quietly waited with a 
dark flush crimsoning his face. 

Rose finished in a dead silence^ with a dizzy sensation 
of falling as she looked about her. M. Vignaud walked 
down the room without noticing any one and offered his 
arm to Rose with a stately bow. 

‘'You have done us too great an honor, mademoiselle. 
If you will allow me, we will go where there is refresh- 
ment. I imagine you have been playing a long while. 
Some are thoughtless. What I heard from your violin 
just now told of a higher life than this.” Saline rose to 
meet him, but he passed her with few words. “Not yet, 
madame.” 

“This is scandalous!” exclaimed Yvette. “Before Sa- 
line’s very eyes!” 

At the door-way of the dining-room M. Vignaud turned 
a benumbing glance at them over his shoulder. No one 
dared follow. There was only a whispered stir in the 
large room while its occupants watched the comedy 
through the doors. They had never seen M. Vignaud 


Out of tlie Past. 89 

do the honors of his house, and an actor present watched 
him with absorption. 

‘‘Dame he muttered. “The old reprobate knows 
what deference and dignity and simplicity are. If I could 
but copy him for my next role!’’ 

Saline was enraged. All her better aspirations were 
charred in the conflict ; but she dared not move, not know- 
ing where safety lay. 

“I don’t understand,” said Yvette, helplessly. “Can’t 
we go away, Mimi?” 

“No, no — stay. I wouldn’t miss it for worlds.” 

“I am afraid,” she whispered. 

“Nothing will happen to you. You have done noth- 
ing.” Other women were waiting to witness something 
cataclysmic, but Yvette was always the most innocent of 
them all. 

In the quiet dining-room M. Vignaud was saying: 

“I have a strange request to make, of which I hope 
you will ask no explanation. I suppose madame has 
asked you to spend the night here?” Rose assented. “If 
you have any friends in the city, I wish very much you 
would allow me to send you to them.” Rose sighed with 
relief : 

“Thank you. I would much rather go.” Then she 
looked her apology. 


90 


Out of the Past. 


‘‘You relieve me of a great anxiety. As you may un- 
derstand at some future time, I am not an exemplary 
man, but until this night I have never seen myself in 
my true colors and I have you to thank.’’ 

Although Rose gave him her undivided attention, ap- 
propriating what she could from his face and manner, she 
had no comprehension of his meaning. M. Vignaud 
was perplexed and at last, as she was rising, he exclaimed 
earnestly : 

“Promise me that you will never recognize any of the 
men and women you have seen here — under any circum- 
stances.” 

Rose looked down at him much startled. 

“Never, mademoiselle — I beg of you.” 

“But why?” 

“They are not real.” 

“But the accompanist ” 

“Is no musician. He is a sham, like the rest.” 

“What is it, then? Do speak so I can understand. 
What are they?” 

“They are not good — that is all.” 

“But Mme. Vignaud!” 

“Is not Mme. Vignaud. I have no wife.” 

Rose showed only in her varying color that she under- 
stood. She looked over the room at Saline with a long 


Out of the Past. 


91 


glance, saying, at last, as she drew a deep breath that 
was like a shiver: 

think she did not mean any harm. Now I must 
go. You will take me to madame, please. There is no 
need of her knowing that I understand.’’ 

M. Vignaud obeyed. As they came near. Saline af- 
fected not to see them until Rose stopped before her. 

‘^Adieu, madame. I shall spend the night with my old 
friend, Mme. Blanc.” 

Saline lost her rage for an instant as Rose took her 
slender, morbid hand in a lingering clasp. There were 
many things Rose would like to say, now that she knew, 
and yet she felt that no words could help. 

Why had the woman asked her? Was it morbid fancy, 
or overweening pride, or was it a longing for help ? She 
felt she would never know. A glimmer of the cause 
struck her as she noticed how Saline’s eyes softened under 
her own. 

She had an impulse to examine the wild beasts one by 
one, but they were different from Saline and would leave 
only cankerous memories, excepting little Yvette crying 
in the corner. 

With every moment the atmosphere grew more dismal 
until Rose went away with downcast eyes. With her 


92 


Out of the Past. 


wraps on at the door, Rose looked up pleadingly to M. 
Vignaud. 

‘^Can you not help her?'^ 

‘‘I !’' Then he said, gently: ‘Tt is useless for us to talk 
of it. You will never see this side of life as it is. There 
is no one from whom she would scorn help as she would 
from me. A long time ago you could have won her over, 
but now — shun her! Shun her like a plague. She is a 
destroyer.'’ 

Rose was too tired for further remonstrance. She 
raised her face to make one more plea, but it was chilled 
on her lips by sounds within the house which rose sud- 
denly upon her and hurried her from the door. Having 
closed the carriage and having given his coachman ex- 
plicit directions, M. Vignaud re-entered his house, where 
pandemonium now reigned. With a frown upon his face, 
he called Saline to him in the hall. 

"‘Send these canaille home/’ he commanded. 

^^What?” 

‘'Send them home.” 

“But supper ” 

“Let them get their suppers at the cafes where they 
belong.” 

“Oh, Henri — no-no-no,” she murmured, touching his 
hands with adorable gentleness. “You are angry, and I 


Out of the Past. 


93 


am sorry. Indeed, there has been no harm done to Miss 
Lloyd.’’ 

‘"No,” he returned shortly, ''because you could not. But 
these beasts of yours — faugh!” 

"Now, Henri, come in and see how amusing they are. 
Mimi is so droll — we are going to dance, and I have a 
new figure to show you, and such a marvel of old wine 
for the toasts. Now, come, dear Henri.” The siren could 
caress a man’s resolution into utter subjection. But, at 
this moment, M. Vignaud was still strong with the purity 
of another influence. He put Saline’s hand away from 
him and slowly reiterated : 

"Send them away. The police will be here in twenty 
minutes from now.” 

She blanched at the word. 

"But why ?” 

"That is my business.” 

Her face changed. She crept away from him and 
slowly gained the door of the drawing-room, with her 
eyes fixed fearfully upon his. When out of his sight, she 
ran to the crowded supper table, exclaiming breathlessly : 

"Yvette, Mimi, everybody — you must listen! M. Vig- 
naud will have the police here in twenty minutes. I think 
I hear them now. I don’t know who it is for; I don’t 
know who has been doing anything. But you must go — 


94 


Out of tlie Past. 


this instant. Nothing shall happen to any of you while 
you are here, I promise. Only go.’’ 

Leaning forward against the table, on which she beat 
her slender hands in feverish excitement. Saline was the 
picture of fear. 

Every one looked at his neighbor and none knew who 
was the felon. Amid endless confusion the men and 
women hurried into the hall to pass out under the fire 
of the ironical adieux of M. Vignaud. They fairly tum- 
bled from the hotel upon the sidewalk and scattered like 
mice. 

Saline stood dejectedly before M. Vignaud. 

‘Ts it for me they are coming?” She swung her hands 
out sideways and clasped them before her nervously. ‘T 
don’t know what I have done. I suppose you do.” 

The master of the house was heartily sorry for the 
erring, impulsive woman. The jewels flashing bravely on 
her splendid throat, the soft silk of her bodice, hardly 
moved by a breath, the richness of all she wore, were so 
unfit a setting for a woman who had sold herself to the 
police of Paris. 

There was a sharp ring of bells in a distant part of the 
silent house, and the servants admitted two gendarmes, to 
whom M. Vignaud said lightly, looking at Saline the 
while : 


Out of tiie Past. 


95 


mistake — a bad mistake — but you shall not lose 
your time. Make them comfortable, Santo.” The facto- 
tum of the hall took them and their thanks to the serv- 
ants' quarters. 

Saline sank upon a chair, burying her head in her 
arms, and, from a distance, M. Vignaud surveyed her. 

‘‘This is a painful situation to which you compel me by 
your folly and your senseless ambition. The moment you 
presumed to turn my house to such ends as I have seen 
to-night, you placed yourself without its doors. I can- 
not expect you to understand how black this action of 
yours is. You do not dream how fearful a thing it is 
to blast the life of a young, defenseless girl as you would 
have done. Your own life has been so wicked that you 
are too callous even to perceive it. If I could help you I 
would. But you are hating me this moment.” She shook 
her head. 

“No? Then let me see if you are in earnest. If you 
will leave the country, I will see that you have an honest 
start anywhere you choose.” 

For a long time she was silent, so long that he thought 
she might have fainted. As he came near she turned a 
flushed, eager face to him. 

“Will you marry me?” 


96 


Out of the Past. 


''Dieu!’' The recoil of his body and his indescribable 
accent of horror were an all-sufficient reply. Saline rose. 

'T understand you, monsieur. I have wronged neither 
you nor any one that I know. I am what I am; you 
should be the last to twdt me with it. You wish me to 
leave your house. I will do so — not to-morrow, but now. 
Let your servants pack what I possess. The articles are 
all in the bureau and the w^ardrobes of my room.” 

'‘As you please. For the first time I respect you.” She 
flushed painfully. 

"When I ask for your respect, monsieur, you may 
offer it.” 

The man felt his resolution evaporating under those 
proud eyes. It was hard to let her go. It grew harder 
with every moment. He walked the hall uneasily, not 
daring now to look at her. 

"Where will you go?” 

"I have my friends. I have my rooms. They have 
been waiting for me.” 

"But not to-night — you won’t go to-night. The dark 
is beastly. I don’t want you to go from my house in 
this way.” 

"You are gallant, monsieur. You wish me to leave, 
but not too roughly, not in such a way as to hurt your 


Out of the Past. 


97 


sensibilities. Unfortunately, I have sensibilities of my 
own — a few.’’ 

Freed from the horrid fear of the police, Saline came 
to herself sufficiently to feel once more her indomitable 
independence. As usual, it shed a sort of majesty about 
her. M. Vignaud came quickly toward her. 

‘‘Forgive me,” he exclaimed, “and I will ask you to 
stay.” 

“No! Not for a million; not even for the respect of 
such an irreproachable man ; not for this and that and all 
your palatial house.” 

As she spoke she drew the jewels from her neck and 
arms and tossed them on a table. 

“To be free again ! To choose where I like or not at 
all 1 To fear no master of the house ! To be myself. Oh 
—Liberty!” 

He had lost her. She already looked upon him as one 
of the ornaments of his hotel, and soon he was mortified 
to see that she had forgotten his existence, her eyes 
bent upon an imaginary goal, her brows gathered in con- 
centrated thought upon some new departure upon which 
her ready wit had already embarked. 

Soon it was she who walked the hall, and it was M. 
Vignaud who waited, endeavoring to stifle his regrets and 
vainly trying to recover the moral strength with which he 


98 


Out of the Past. 


had acted but a short half-hour ago. But it was gone. 
It had been little more than a smoldering ember fanned 
to burning activity by the breath of another. 

Saline’s effects were brought to her by two weeping 
maids, one of whom insisted upon following her fortunes, 
with or without wages, and altogether, women, bundles 
an-d trunks, they were placed in a cab and were driven 
away from the hotel on the Boulevard Haussman, as 
the clocks were striking the early morning hour. 

At the same time Rose bade Mme. Blanc good-night, 
after an explanatory chat, and mounted to her room. As 
she was about to turn the latch a disheveled object flew 
up the stairs and dropped at her feet with half a laugh 
and half a sob. Babette cried : 

''It is M’amselle, dear M’amselle. I thought it was 
the saints when I heard your voice.” 

Here the child lapsed into incoherence as Rose drew 
her to her feet and kissed her warmly on either cheek. 

In his room above Robert heard and wondered anx- 
iously what chance had brought his beloved to the house 
at so strange an hour, and continued to ponder over it 
for half the remaining night, while M. Vignaud, in his 
costly hotel, paced from room to room, memory filled, 
haunted with a vivid presence, false and unstable but glo- 
rious, until the dying night gave way to the dull day. 


CHAPTER VII. 


Slave. — ‘^Here, Sire, comes one that would walk straight, but 
is crooked.” 

Khalif. — “Not Allah himself can help him, let him first be born 
again.” — Arabian Tale. 


Saline also pondered. As the early dawn spread 
through the streets, her maid ran to the nearest pneu- 
matic tube and dropped a note into its mouth, which was 
delivered to Robert a few hours later on his breakfast 
tray by Babette in the whitest of aprons and with the 
freshest of smiles. As he spread his napkin and took a 
long breath of the fresh morning air blowing through 
the window, Babette rested her hand on her hip, a ges- 
ture always preliminary to important news. She myste- 
riously said: 

''Something divine happened last night.’’ 

"Yes?” 


"Yes; something heavenly.” 

"You went to confession?” 

"Now ! That is stupid. But I zms kissed by an angel.” 
Robert studiously examined his rolls. 

T did not know you were fiancee.” 

' What a canard,” laughed Babette, circling about on 


lOO 


Out of the Past. 


one heel. ‘‘It was Mile. Rose, that dearest, loveliest 
lady. And she is so sweet to kiss. You have no idea.” 

“No, I haven't,” growled Robert, burning himself. 

“And you ought to have seen her. She wore violet, 
and nothing on her neck and arms, all round and pretty, 
but lace like cobwebs. She was a queen picture — and the 
prettiest slippers ! ( I think they were violet, but Mme. 

Blanc says not.) And — and that was all. But her dress 
seemed to love her and showed her all beautiful. I shall 
never forget, with the candle light round her head like 
a saint, and her eyes looking down into mine so soft-like.” 

“Babette, go down stairs,” ordered Robert. 

“But I want to tell you.” 

“No.” 

“But I want to.” 

“I can’t help that. Go — down — stairs. And, Babette — 
stay there! Don’t come telling me any more.” 

“But, m’sieur; I knew she was thinking of you.” 

“Dame ! Will you be quiet.” 

“No; I won’t. She is in the garden now, and she 
wants to see you.” 

Holding her by the shoulders, Robert cried: 

“How do you know?” 

“Because ” 


“Well— because?” 


Out of the Past. 


lOI 


^'Because — but I won't tell you." With that Babette 
whisked out of the room, and in five minutes Robert had 
finished his toilet and was entering the garden, hearing 
a whisper from Babette behind the old stair. 

‘'M’sieur! Madame's gone to market." 

Rose was lingering among the flowers and did not see 
him until he was before her. She sustained his look for 
a brave second, then dropped her eyes in a confusion 
which paid tribute to their last meeting. 

‘‘I am intruding. Miss Lloyd." She shook her head. 

'‘Then I may stay?" Her look assented and he walked 
on by her side without speaking until she remonstrated : 

"Silence is hard to bear." 

"Between friends, yes. Is it because silence means so 
much ? The heart seems to turn traitor in silence and tell 
what one dare scarcely think. That is why I prize si- 
lence. I think you know me best so." 

"But I have no right — I dare not." 

"Can you help it? Do you not already know me, and 
are not some of my faults already familiar to you ?” 

"Indeed, I do not know your faults." 

"I think you do. There remains much you do not 
know. But some day I shall be compelled to tell you 
all I try to keep to myself." 

"But, why?" she asked, troubled. 


102 


Out of the Past. 


''Because I cannot keep certain things to myself when 
your eyes are upon me.” 

"I pray you, monsieur.” 

"Th^n I will be silent.” 

She struggled with his quiet presence, asking nothing, 
claiming nothing, yet taking all, until the clatter of 
Babette’s sabots released her. 

"I must go. Perhaps we shall not meet again.” 

"That could not be.” 

"At least it will be a long time.” 

"That must not be.” He acquitted himself well of the 
task of formally holding her hand and of quietly letting 
it go. But he fulfilled only the letter of the law. 

When from his window he had watched her drive 
away to the station with Babette and Mine. Blanc, he 
turned about with a remembrance of something left un- 
done. It was an hour before he could recall what it was. 
Then he looked for the scented note which had been 
tossed aside. 

"Monsieur,” he read, "a cruel fate has overtaken me, 
and I turn to you for assistance, not because I would 
trade upon so slight an acquaintance, but because, for 
some indefinable reason, I trust you. You are M. 
Vignaud’s friend. You can help me if you will. There 
is little to call me abroad to-day. I will wait your con- 


Out of the Past. 


103 


venience, but I beg you to come at any hour that suits 
you — but, at least, to come. 

''Accept the assurance of my greatest esteem and be- 
lieve me forever your friend. Saline Vignaud. 

"Pray destroy my note.^' 

“How tiresome muttered Robert. "There has been 
a misunderstanding, and the disinterested friend is re- 
quested to appear. I hate such things. I can go at five 
o’clock, and I suppose I must.” But at five o’clock callers 
arrived, followed by his agent, who remained to dine with 
him, and it was after eight o’clock before Robert was 
free. The dinner had been a good one, the news brought 
by his agent had been exceptionally bright, and Robert 
was inclined to be indulgent, even to a disagreeable duty. 

He went to the address Saline had given and found her 
in a marvelous apartment, gowned as she had been the 
night before. She was pale, and her eyes burned bril- 
liantly, but otherwise she bore no signs of distress, ex- 
cepting that she seemed intensely reserved and intensely 
alive. 

“Indeed you are good. (Take monsieur’s things, 
Louise, and leave us.) I have to go out shortly, but per- 
haps you will accompany me and finish on the way. You 
do not know how I appreciate this. Why did I write 
you? Because I trust you. You have a heart of gold. 


104 


Out of the Past. 


Sit here, please, I want you to hear all/’ Robert took the 
chair beside her and for a moment she leaned back among 
the cushions of the divan with closed eyes, as though con- 
centrating her thoughts, a repose in which she was cer- 
tainly fair to see. Finding him regarding her curiously, 
and keeping her eyes steadily upon his, she asked : 

^‘Is it the custom in the grand monde for men to dis- 
card their wives for other than serious offense ?” 

‘"Most assuredly not.” 

‘‘What do women of the world do in such cases ?” 

“They return to their families, I presume.” 

“But I have none.” 

“My dear Mme. Vignaud, I trust nothing so serious 
has occurred.” 

“But it has. Monsieur sent me away last night.” 

“At night?” 

“At one o’clock or after.” 

“You shock me.” 

“I thought perhaps it was the usual way,” she said in- 
differently. “I know so little about these things. I have 
been thinking and thinking all day, but I see no way to 
follow, excepting the old round of rehearsal and dressing 
and dancing. The hateful old round. And then the hor- 
rid agents. Think of it!” she cried, catching his hand. 
“They have put some one in my place as first lady of the 


Out of the Past. 


105 

ballet. I fear I cannot regain — that is what I must go 
out for soon. I must see old Gaspard and persuade him 
to take me — must go on my knees, I suppose — promise 
anything, half my salary, perhaps, to get back my place.’^ 
She still held Robert's hand, apparently unconscious of 
all but her misfortune. 

^‘What can I do, madame?" 

‘'If you will help me first with Gaspard. He adores 
you — he will do anything for you. Ah, do — do !" With 
brimming eyes she implored him, carrying his hand to 
her lips in a childish gesture of pleading. 

“In what way?" 

“Tell him you wish it." 

He had withdrawn his hand and frowned at thought 
of making Saline appear his protegee. Saline sighed 
softly. “I should not be indebted to you long." 

“Can I not assist you with M. Vignaud?" 

“No ! I will not return to him — a man whose heart is 
so black. He seemed so kind — now you are hard with- 
out, but kind in your heart. Do help me — I implore 
you." In a flash she was beside him on the floor, all her 
beauty breathing up at him, her tearful face pleading, 
her slender hands caressing. 

“This is not necessary," exclaimed Robert, coldly. “If 
I help you it will not be because you fall at my feet. You 


io6 


Out of the Past. 


may be beautiful — as you know — but your beauty is loath- 
some when you misuse it so/^ 

She only smiled up at him and nestled farther down 
among her silken folds. 

‘‘Yes; it is all quite true, in books. But I like to be 
on my knees to you. Your face is so much finer from 
this point of view. And I like your freezing temper be- 
cause then I need not fear — anything. You are a sort of 
god up there, with your stern brows and your splendid 
eyes and your nervous mouth — and I like to feel it.’’ 

“Circe!’’ muttered Robert, “to make beasts of men! 
I warn you,” he said aloud, “that if you lose one jot 
more of my respect I will not help you on any considera- 
tion.” 

“Respect !” she laughed, making a face at him and set- 
tling back against the divan. “How easily you are de- 
prived of it! A childish whim — which is partly a wom- 
an’s right — and, presto ! off you go at a tangent, throw- 
ing respect in the waste basket! Do you think I cannot 
hold your respect — if — I — ^want — it? Now, don’t spoil 
the only happy hour I have known for weeks — ^the only 
one I may know for years.” 

“You color your picture too highly. I am nothing to 
you.” 

“That is just it,” she said, quietly. ‘‘You are nothing 


Out of tlie Past. 


107 


to me, so I treat you as I like. I need not make you 
love me or hate me. I can be my true self. And, m'sieur, 
my true self is very much of a child. Will you forgive 
me She had risen and stood nobly before him. 

‘‘I have nothing to forgive,’’ he answered more gently. 
^^But time presses. I wish to understand what I can do 
for you.” 

'‘Ah ! then you will help me !” She drew a long sigh 
of relief. "But I feel faint. I have been so anxious — I 
have not eaten. Will you bear with me a little longer?” 
She called Louise and asked for crackers and wine. When 
the tray came she filled two glasses. "You will not re- 
fuse what hospitality I have to offer! I shall feel that 
you scorn me, indeed.” She took the glass. "Nearly ten 
o’clock ! I must see Gaspard to-night. If I fail the out- 
look is so dreadful. Poverty! He may turn me away 
and then it is all over. You cannot dream how I fear 
that.” A feverish color came to her face. "M’sieur!” she 
cried, harshly, "you say you will help me. It is late. You 
can have little to do now. Come with me now. Tell 
Gaspard why I broke my contract. Make him take me. 
If you knew what it means !” 

For some reason his mind did not respond quickly, but 
at length he put his objection into words. "I should pre- 
fer to see Gaspard alone.” 


io8 


Out of the Past. 


‘‘Very well ; I will wait in the carriage, and I can sign 
the contract, if necessary. I am so grateful, dear friend 
She smoothed his hand against her cheek. 

“There is no time to waste so uselessly.” Quickly 
withdrawing. “It is a pity you are too ignorant to be- 
have as other women do !” 

“Ignorant!” she cried, laughing and whirling about 
the room, gathering a lace fichu and a silk shawl from 
somewhere, ringing for Louise, ordering a carriage, and 
handing Robert a second glass of wine, all between smiles 
and laughter. Robert tasted the glass mechanically, but 
set it down with a keen glance at her. 

“Your wine is strong, madame. I never knew so small 
a glass to hold so much fire. Is it drugged?” 

“Monsieur! You must be dreaming.” 

“Not I.” 

“See how base your suspicions are.” Filling a glass, 
she held it to the light before drinking. 

“Here is to success with Gaspard,” she sang gayly, and 
Robert half unconsciously drank the toast. 

“Another glass, madame,” he said, smiling, “and I 
should leave you for an apothecary. But I am strong. 
Your pretty, innocent wine has found its match, I hope.” 

Saline seemed more astonishingly handsome than ever 


Out of the Past. 


109 


when she had half concealed herself in silk and fichu, de- 
scending the stairs on his arm, quite fearful of falling. 

''Where does this Gaspard live?’’ 

"Out on the road to the forest by the St. Cloud en- 
trance.” 

"But will he be awake?” 

"Very much awake. This is his busy time, from now 
until one o’clock or after, at least in summer. It is a 
beautiful drive, and it will be mysterious the last part of 
the way on the wooded road. There is no moon to-night. 
Isn’t it fun? Do unbend a little. I am not a gorgon or 
a fearful death,” she exclaimed, petulantly. 

"You might be both to the wrong man.” 

He was both vexed and uneasy. The fiery fluid she 
had given him ran riot. He felt himself on the verge 
of oblivion to all but the extraordinary magnetism of 
this woman, and he had yet before him a two or three 
hour tete-a-tete. His repugnance to her was deep rooted ; 
but it w’as gradually becoming vague, losing its force in 
her apparent sincerity and questioning even its right of 
existence in her vivid atmosphere. She was long silent 
as they drove to the city gate and out upon the road be- 
yond, and her very silence worked for her, in his imagi- 
nation, until he was not sorry to be where he was. 

Out of the dusky darkness the humming of the insect 


no 


Out of the Past. 


world droned its sleepy song. The shadowy columns of 
great trees loomed at the windows, to be passed in the 
warm, forest-scented air like sentinels asleep at their post. 
The flowers, rising and falling on the woman’s bosom, 
filled the carriage with heavy sweetness, and her soft 
breathing, though he could not hear it, tantalized him 
with mystery. 

‘Tt is strange that you will always misunderstand me,” 
she murmured, regretfully. ‘‘For all your chivalry you 
impute to me only what all other men do — nothing better 
— you doubt my sincerity, you think me ignorant, design- 
ing, incapable of a generous affection. Perhaps all that 
was true only so long ago as before I knew you. But it 
is not true now — not all — and I am sorry it is not. It is 
so hard to be good when you have never been good. I 
wish I had never seen you. I could be gay then without 
the nagging thought, ‘He would not have me so.’ Why 
did you come to disturb me ?” Saline put a clinging hand 
on his shoulder and raised her face close to his. “Why 
could you not stay in your monastery and leave me free ?” 

“Leave you free !” 

“Yes, I said, leave me free. Leave me to my unfet- 
tered life instead of tying me to you.” 

“Tying you to me!” 

“Tying, binding, chaining me, with your splendid face, 


Out of the Past. 


Ill 


which will not quit my dreams ; with your ambitions and 
powers, your great future — all that you are ! Why didn’t 
you leave me in peace?” 

“This is madness.” 

“You are right — the madness that ends in the Seine 
or hangs in the forest or dies in a closet.” 

“My dear Madame Vignaud ” 

''Non! You shall not call me that hateful name.” 

“My dear child, then. This is the fancy of an hour, 
born of the beauty of the night, child of a thousand in- 
fluences, of no more strength than cobwebs. Put it from 
you,” 

“I cannot. It is my only happiness. Listen,” she con- 
tinued, with every word a caress. “I would be true to 
you ; I would bring you the love of self-sacrifice, and that 
is hard for me to give. You have awakened me to a new 
life, a new understanding of myself, to a new need. 1 
want to be honest — I need your help — need your sup- 
port and your loyalty. Only love me a little, a very little, 
and I will be good. I will show you how great a woman 
can be who has known all things without love, and when 
loves comes can lay at your feet all she knows. I want 
to make you great, the greatest in your profession. I 
can! — I was not meant for small ways of life, for small 
struggles. And I was not meant for all the wretched 


II2 


Out of the Past. 


past which you despise. I came to it in the horror of 
being lost in mean littleness. I could not face that — the 
endless struggle with penury, mean conditions. It was 
that horror which haunted me out of an honest life into 
the other. Your heart is great enough to understand, to 
forgive. You are just enough not to destroy a woman 
for what you condone in a man. Help me, beloved ; help 
me.’' Her head drooped on his shoulder and her arms 
about his neck begged for an answer. 

He bent slowly forward and kissed her forehead. 

‘‘I have prayed night and day for this, for your for- 
giveness,” she murmured, and her voice was like a prayer. 
‘‘To have a very little of your love would be the sign 
of God’s forgiveness. I have suffered for it, God knows ; 
and I think, perhaps. He puts that in the account and bal- 
ances my life so that there is just this small hope for me; 
just the small chance that you may not cast me away. It 
has been such utter failure all my life; such a dismal 
round of unreal things, painted shams ; such sickness to 
death ; such misery in trying to uphold what was left of 
my woman’s dignity.” 

“Poor child!” 

“Pity me. I am better for it. 

She was silent a little, half crying in the darkness. 


Out of the Past. 


113 

When she spoke again her voice was stronger and vi- 
brated with some new emotion. 

'^See how beautiful the night is — how full the air 
seems with love. Did you see the shadow of the ivy on 
that tree? That is the way I would love — if you would 
let me — I would keep the storms from you, and you need 
only spread your shade between me and the world and 
love me — if you would — a very little. Did you hear the 
stroke of the bell of the chapel of St. Cloud on the hill? 
It must be twelve — night dying in the arms of morning. 
Oh, Robert — love me!’’ She slipped softly to the floor, 
nestling her head on his knee. He caught her up in- 
stantly and she buried her face in his neck. 

The bells of St. Cloud were ringing. 

kiss for each stroke of the dying night,” she whis- 
pered. With the second touch of her warm lips a memory 
stirred in the depths of his past. 

He saw a bed, shifting shadows, candle light on a dead 
face and white-shrouded figure. 

He felt the breath of suffocating heat, and knew two 
figures standing in the shadows. 

So intense was the vision that he scarcely felt Saline in 
his arms until she gave him the last passionate kiss which 
awoke and stormed all his senses. 


Out of the Past. 


114 

‘‘The bells! The bells!” he cried, hoarsely. 

All was over in a moment. 

It was nothing for his young strength to struggle free 
from her, to break open the door and fling himself out 
upon the road. 

For a moment he floundered in the dust. Then he 
was up and away, running the forest like a mad thing. 

The carriage rolled on with its door grinding against 
the wheel, whether to Old Gaspard's he never knew. 

In time the spirit of the dewy, whispering forest al- 
layed the torment of fever which had carried him forward 
like sand in hot wind. 

He fell at last on the moss under a tangle of shrubs, 
with a burst of thanksgiving. 

“God bless the bells of St. Cloud!” 

To the deep-mouthed peals of distant thunder far away 
coastward he breathed the first prayer that had ever 
winged its way to his mother, and, for the first time in 
his life, implored forgiveness of her memory timidly and 
reverently. 

When again he was himself, standing strong and proud 
with the kings of the forest, he said aloud: 

“My mother spoke with me this night. God make me 
worthy of her.” 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Cynic: “Heed the ways of the living and forget the dead/’ 

“You have seen my father?'' asked Rose of the young 
clergyman from Peoria, in the afternoon following the 
musicale at M. Vignaud's hotel. 

“It was almost as much for that reason as for the pleas- 
ure of seeing you that I looked you up at the Legation. I 
thought you would like to know that you need not 

“Concern myself about him ?'' 

“Not quite that." 

“Then he is happy?" 

“And astonishingly successful." 

“You mean in love as well as in politics.” 

Young Danforth looked uncomfortable. 

“Is she very beautiful ?" 

“Rather earthy." 

“Then where is the success?" 

“Politics sink a great deal of money." 

“And she has it." After a pause: “Has she anything 
else?" 


ii6 


Out of the Past. 


‘‘A loud voice, a handsome figure, plenty of good na- 
ture — while she has what she wants/' 

''Are you quite charitable?" 

"Quite. More than I should be if it were my fortune 
to live in the same house with her." 

"And where are you living?" 

"On the road, as you see. I had a call to a pulpit in 
a country town for a year after leaving college. Then I 
resigned for a year of travel. Now, Rosette, don't you 
quizz me." 

She laughed. "Has there been no one to do it for me 
all this time?" 

"Nope." 

"And you haven't pined away ?" with mock melancholy. 

"Not on your life. Been trying to keep myself in jolly 
good condition for your dear sake." 

"Stop it, Jack. You should have left your slang in 
college." 

"So I did for a year. Lost twenty pounds.” 

"Do your weight and your slang stand or fall to- 
gether ?" 

"It looks like it. Honest, Rose; it's the most awful 
business, this providing a congregation with a minister 
to fit their crotchets." 


'Yes?" 


Out of tlie Past. 


117 

‘^Awful ! They seem to think youTe not a man, but a 
sort of warning to men — a guide post with signs — so 
many miles to perdition; so many miles to be saved, if 
you turn to the right, etc/’ 

^‘You scandalized them?” 

‘'Couldn’t help it,” ruefully. 

“Smoking too much for them?'' 

“Nope. I left that in college with my slang — a jolly 
big mistake. Hadn’t a notion that golf was a sin and foot- 
ball next door to murder, and a moonlight sail the jaws 
of the devil!” 

“Jack; I believe you flirted.” 

“Nary a flirt in town. All thin little spinsters who 
didn’t dare smile at me.” 

“You see you are handsome,” bending her merry face 
over her yarns. 

“I was once, but those spinsters pickled me.” Here 
Rose lost her gravity. 

“But, Jack, you know you believe in your calling,” she 
remonstrated. 

“Y-es. If I can ever find a congregation that will look 
at it as I do.” 

“Don’t you remember the nobility of man we used to 
talk about?” 


ii8 


Out of the Past. 


^‘Nobility fiddlesticks/’ Jack got up to look at the sea 
as the rain fell on it. 

''No — ^but really,” Rose insisted. 

"Really ; I believe nobility is born in a feHow and very 
few get a chance at the plum.” 

"Paris is hurting you,” Rose said seriously. 

"It might in time,” he admitted, flushing. "It’s a bad 
place for a man’s morals if they’re not bred in the bone.” 
Rose laid down her work to examine him again. As she 
resumed it she said, with eyes down: 

"I think you have made a mistake.” 

"How?” 

"You should choose some way of life that does not set 
you apart from the world.” 

"Now, Rosey,” he remonstrated, "don’t take a man too 
seriously when he’s had a bad breakfast. My calling is 
the only thing in life I can see worth doing. It is the 
only one I would sacrifice a night’s sleep for. You 
mustn’t think I have done myself up yet. You see, I 
tried the Little Minister to a New England Thrums and — 
well — I didn’t succeed. There wasn’t any Babby.” 

I see. 

"Now, if you had been there ” 

"Jack ! You sinner.” 


Out of tlie Past. 


119 


''Rose; do you know you are different?” 

"I hope not too different.” 

"But you are more complicated — more stunning.” 

" ^Um!” 

"Something has been happening to you.” 

Under his examination she looked up serenely. As he 
watched her his manner changed. "I thought I was talk- 
ing to the merry girl who left home going on two years 
ago. • But I find a thoughtful woman — and — you have 
not been unhappy ?” he asked, both diffidently and gently. 
She returned his look bravely, but her eyes soon deepened 
into sadness. It was he who had been her mother's fa- 
vorite and at her wish it was he who had pronounced her 
mother's funeral service. 

"Dear little friend, I have been rough and thoughtless. 
I came from your home and I bring you no comfort — only 
husks. The spot over in the silent resting-place is fair 
and green. Flowers have kept watch with every Lord's 
day and many go there. Many whom your mother loved 
and helped.” 

"Who takes the flowers ?” she asked, not trying to^ hide 
the tears that were coming. He did not answer. "Is it 
you? Dear old Jack, she could be sure of you.” 

"I could not do less. Did you know it was your mother 
who helped me once at college when I must have given 


120 


Out of the Past. 


up my career otherwise? She helps me often now. The 
dead are strangely sympathetic.’’ 

''You do not mean ” 

"No. I do not mean in the seance room. I mean that 
the impress of such an influence as your mother’s is 
stronger upon me now than when she was among the 
living.” 

"Others do not think so,” she said, turning away, and 
he could make no reply that would not cast a slur upon 
Thomas Lloyd. "Ah, well,” drying her eyes, "we are 
among the living. The day is ours, the sunlight, and the 
glorious night. I have no right to weep them away.” 

"You have something better to do, and I am proud of 
you for it. We are talking of a great concert when you 
come home to us.” 

"Don’t, Jack; don’t,” she exclaimed with a quiver of 
pain in her voice. 

"You do not mean ” 

"Yes. I shall never see the dear place again.” 

"Now, what in thjimder have they been doing to you?” 

"Nothing — just fortune. I won’t go. You know how 
obstinate I am.” 

"Yes. I saw you ride a tikeish critter once.” The 
memory brought a smile to his face. "But, Rosette, our 
little May Queen, you don’t mean to be obstinate with me, 


Out of the Past. 


I2I 


do you? You'll give me a drop of coffee to keep me in 
order, eh? You've taken it out of me, straight enough.” 

She ordered coffee in the summer-house, which was 
sheltered just enough from the warm, summer rain and 
their tete-a-tete continued for another hour longer before 
Jack Danforth went back to town, begging to come again. 

That night Rose dreamed of home. She was awakened 
by the rumble of a carriage over the hard sand further 
up on the beach. All night the carriage rolled and rum- 
bled over the downs, and the morning found her tired and 
spiritless. The rain has ceased, leaving the beach honey- 
combed with pools, in which the scurrying clouds of the 
clearing storm were reflected in soft miniature, and the 
sea, away to the ofling, rolled long and slow, hardly rising 
to a whitecap. 

It all seemed unnatural. The house looked ghastly. 
There was no talking wind along the sands. Gulls beat 
about over the sea for bits of floatage, breaking the still- 
ness with harsh cries. Everywhere gray and white tired 
the eye with subdued glare. 

Rose ventured out, hoping to find a breeze somewhere. 
As she walked over the oozing sand a man approached, 
head down, and she recognized Robert Dinsmore with a 
sort of fright. His face was pale when he came up. 

*‘May I see you. Miss Lloyd?” 


122 


Out of the Past. 


'‘Here I am/’ she answered, smiling. 

"But do you wish to see me ?” 

"Yes — always — I am afraid.” 

"Afraid?” 

She nodded and threw off her cape, saying into its 
folds : 

"It is warm, don’t you think ?” 

"I suppose it is. Let me take that. You have had a 
heavy rain here. I heard distant thunder last night, but 
there was no rain in Paris, for I was driving late.” 

"In a carriage ?” 

"Yes. Why — may I ask.” 

"Because — but never mind. Are you in trouble? Would 
it not be pleasanter in the house ?” 

"Not unless it is your preference. The air does me 
good.” 

He took off his traveling cap, ramming it into his 
pocket, and walked moodily on by her side. 

"Why did you ask me about the carriage ?” 

"Because I heard one rolling through the night.” 

"Anything else?” 

"N — no. But the impression was most painful.” 

"In what way? Please do not mind my inquisitive- 
ness.” 

"I do not mind. But it is hard to tell you. It felt 


Out of the Past. 


123 


like danger and woke me twice with such terror that 
I had to sit up, light my candles and read. I did not 
fall asleep until late in the morning.” 

“Curious ! It zvas danger, and I have come to tell you.” 

She stood still. “Were you hurt?” 

“No. I think I am better for it — not such a consum- 
mate fool as I have been.” 

“That does not help me to understand you.” 

“No — but you see I am getting myself up to the point 
where I can hold on. I want to say first that I tell you 
because I am anxious you should understand me thor- 
oughly, and am even more anxious that there should be 
no halo of perfection about me to you. I do not want to 
be overrated by the woman I love — if I can help it.” 

He did not look to see the color mounting beautifully 
over her face nor to see how lustrous her serious eyes 
had become. 

“Now then!” he said, as though standing up to a 
physical contest. He whirled round and faced her with 
his story, treating himself without favor to the end. 

Breathing deeply, she said: “That was right. But it 
must have been frightful to do at the last — to overcome 
so much.” For a moment she mused to herself before 
saying: “Then M. Vignaud sent her away night before 
last. I thought he might.” With delicious candor she 


124 


Out of the Past. 


continued: ''You see^ I know all about it. I know that 
woman to be even worse than you think. She was never 
M. Vig'naud’s wife. Under the same pretense she had 
me play to a company of nondescripts — frightful beings 
who have haunted me ever since — they seemed so pol- 
luted, indescribably worse than she.’' Robert’s wrath was 
ready to break when she added : "I understand what she 
was trying to accomplish with you; but what was she 
doing with me?” 

"God knows — perhaps. Dieu merci, you are out of it. 
But I must not forget. I have more to tell you, and it 
is the worst.” 

"You have done something?” doubtfully. 

"No. I told you of the bells of St. Cloud?” 

"Yes, and of the mother, the child, the heat. I seem 
to see and feel it.” 

"It is not so very much to tell, after all — only it has 
controlled my imagination for so long. The woman was 
my mother.” 

Rose clasped her hands. 

"You were the child ! And the priest?” 

"Was Father Benedict.” The story seemed simple now 
that it had been told. But Robert’s eyes fell as he con- 
tinued, with fear of what he might see in her face when 


Out of the Past. 


125 


next he should look. "'All that is not so much. The 
trouble is — the trouble is 

‘‘You do not know who you are.’^ 

“Yes — how did 3^ou know?'^ 

“I cannot tell. It is like the carriagfe.'' 

“It has tortured me all my life. But it was never quite 
so bad as it is now before the woman I love.’’ 

Rose turned a face of loveliest shy sympathy. 

“Do you not despise me ?” 

“You will never know how little cause I could have for 
that,” she replied, speaking with difficulty. 

“Could you marry a man such as I am ?” 

“I couldn’t say I wouldn’t,” she admitted, backing 
away from him. 

“But would vou?” 

“I wouldn’t if I couldn't.’^ 

“Rose!” 

“Sir?” 

''Will you marry me?” 

She tossed back her head and stooped to gather up her 
skirt in one hand. 

“Catch me 1” she cried, and was off like an arrow down 
the sands toward the distant house. 

For an instant he stood abashed, perplexed. But her 
flying figure and the laugh she tossed back at him gave 


126 


Out of tlie Past. 


him his feet. For still another moment he watched her, 
with the first chills of happiness taking possession of him. 
Then he was after her with a huzzah. 

They flew over the wet sands, Robert gaining moment 
by moment, until Rose tore through a short cut and 
bounded into the house just as Robert reached it, just as 
her landlady was coming out, and just as Rose’s two dis- 
creet pupils were approaching from the other side. With 
a little gasp Rose pushed back her pretty hair to say 
breathlessly : 

‘Xet me present my future husband, mesdames.” 

And Saline? She returned to Paris. 


CHAPTER IX. 


Threads in the woof of Destiny 
Mingle their dark and shine; 

Love in its glory of sacrifice, 

Fear and its terrors fine. 

Birth, Death and the Hero — 

Which in the woof is strong? 

Which thread will break in the weaving, 

And silence the weaver’s song? 

In announcing his engagement Robert wrote to Bene- 
dict from Porte Sauveur de Peche, the hamlet by the sea. 

^‘The only cloud in my sky is your absence, dear friend. 
She has come as I prophesied, and in the sunlight of her 
coming my unreasonable fears of a catastrophe have fled 
like shadows of night. No catastrophe can befall us now 
unless some unseen fate looms up out of a past of which 
we are unconscious. 

‘^You are to be absent many months. But return to us 
as soon as possible. You, will find us in our own home 
here by the sea, for I am thinking of buying the quaint 
place, and it will be ready for us in spring.’' 

In November Robert wrote: 

‘Taris. 

‘Tray for me, Pater. I fear my soul will lose itself 
in too deep happiness. We have been married by a dear 


128 


Out of tlie Past. 


friend of Rose — a young divine from her own city — and 
we leave for the Riviera in a half hour. Rose explicitly 
wished to be married in the fashion of her own people, 
without announcement and without any of our usual 
ceremonies. The marriage form is so purely for herself 
and for the world that I would have accepted any cere- 
mony she might have chosen. Bid us godspeed.'’ 

In January Robert wrote in reply to a question : 

‘‘Villa des Pines. 

“My Dear Pater: The extracts you quote from news- 
papers are much exaggerated, and I warn you not to be- 
lieve more than half. To acclaim any man as ‘Paganini 
reincarnated’ is to be a fool. It is true that I have many 
more engagements offered me than I accept, and that I 
am rapidly becoming what is called a rich man. Our ex- 
penses are relatively light, and it is an easy matter to 
bank in Rose’s name a growing sum, which will insure her 
comfort should I break an arm or be knocked out alto- 
gether. 

“If you could see her, Pater ! I admit that at times she 
frightens me with the shade of melancholy which ob- 
scures her face ; but, in the next moment, her laughter and 
serenity return, shining through her sweet face in a way 
that not even you know yet. I think a memory rises in 
such moments of the shock she received when you and I 
first knew her, which produced the prostration of those 
winter months, a shock of which I know no more now 
than I knew then. 


Out of the Past. 


129 


^‘We shall return to Paris late in May, to go down to 
Porte Sauveur to take possession of the old house, which 
is being remodeled. You will have returned and must 
lose no time in coming to us. I am making no contracts 
for that time, although the English season looks alluring. 
I want to live with my happiness. 

'‘Adieu, my Pater.'’ 

With the coming of May, Benedict returned to the 
monastery; the Dinsmores came from the Reviera and 
went to Porte Sauveur, and Babette went with them. 

The cool freshness of spring still lent zest to the first 
warm days of early June. 

The house by the sea, now white and comely, spread in- 
viting piazzas over the green svv^ard reclaimed from the 
golden sands. The summer-house wore a Japanese gala 
look in its flowering baskets swinging in its many alcoves. 
On a broad, low table within it, laid with white and silver, 
coffee and tea-urns were standing, hot with the spirit fires 
beneath them. 

"Rolls. Babette, rolls !" sang a musical voice within the 
house, "and be careful of your eggs. Oh, what a morn- 
ing!" cried Rose, coming to the open door with arms 
stretched across it and her head thrown back to the soft 
sea-wind. "No rush — no trams — no crowds — no duties 
but just our own — no concert to-night! And the sea, 


130 


Out of the Past. 


Robert! Look at the changing, lovely thing. And the 
swish of it along the beach — the touch of a goddess’ gar- 
ment. I should call the sea feminine. Just look how sin- 
uous she is and alluring, and there are the white sails 
she WOOS. How fine they are in the offing ! Do you know 
we are very late? Half after nine!” Robert laid either 
hand upon hers, looking out over her shoulder. 

^'Does it matter, dear?” 

''Only that Father Benedict comes at noon.” 

"So much the better. We shall be the fresher to re- 
ceive him.” 

"There goes Babette with the rolls. Must I bid you 
to breakfast?” 

"Not if you precede me.” She slipped from his hands 
and beckoned him out. When he had placed her to his 
satisfaction, where she had full view of the sea with the 
swinging baskets behind her and the burnished urns red 
glowing at her hand, he drew a chair where he could 
watch her best, deftly preparing their coffee and other 
preliminaries. When these had been comfortably fin- 
ished, he broke the silence reminiscently. 

"A year ago we were like the unfitted parts of a deli- 
cate machine, incomplete and valueless. Now we should 
be worth something. Did you know that you have taught 


Out of the Past. 


131 

me to find myself in loving you? For very pride, if for 
nothing else, I must give the world something in return. 
But there is one regret — I fear you have smothered your 
talent in marrying me/’ 

“But I have other, weightier concerns.” 

“Weightier? Ask yourself a little deeper. Do you 
not regret it?” 

Her eyes opened wide. 

“Not a bit.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Quite. You see, I would rather love you.” 

“You take me at an unfair advantage. I feel the eyes 
of the sea and the gulls. You positively must not say such 
things unless we are alone.” 

“Must?” 

“Yes.” 

“How serious you are. I would like to play exceed- 
ingly well, but you do it for me. Often when you are 
at work an ideal of what you are playing grows in my 
mind, and then in an hour, a week or a month you re- 
produce that ideal, living, palpitating, with something of 
yourself running through it like shafts of light. Ah, that 
is playing ! Do you think I would give that up for any- 
thing I could do with a violin ?” 


132 


Out of the Past. 


“That explains it/’ mused Robert. “Now I understand 
the curious phase of mind that I have had often during 
the last year. You sorceress, fancier of dreams, lover of 
ideals ! So it is your heart throbbing through my fingers ? 
It is a heavenly road to your heart, dear. Now I under- 
stand why I have never been able to surprise in you the 
least tinge of regret for the merging of your hopes into 
my life. It is much to ask of a woman.” 

She shook her head. 

“Yes — no less than half a life/’ he insisted. “It can- 
not but be a sacrifice, though nobility hides it even from 
your own consciousness. And yet, ma mie — you have 
but bartered after all; it is a barter well worth man’s 
estate.” Rose raised her pretty, proud head a little 
straighter on its rounding throat and looked inquiringly 
at him. 

He spread his hand out, palm up, and leaned over it, 
speaking with a lilt in his low voice like the love-note of 
a thrush : 

“You bartered with the giver of life. You exchanged, 
sold, threw away world success for a priceless coin, the 
coin of God, a soul — to be yours to love, yours to mold, 
yours in the first and the last hour. Your compact is 
with God, beloved, not with man or the world.” 

All pride fell away from her. She laid her head on his 


Out of the Past. 


133 


open palm. There was a benediction in the air to Rob- 
ert, and when the swift moment passed back into their 
natures, a golden memory, they looked, each into the 
other's eyes, better loved. After that there was silence 
which they had no need to break. A harsh sound, for- 
eign to the fall and splash of the waves and the ripple of 
sand back with the ebb^ broke their silent communion. 
As Robert rose he exclaimed: 

‘'Bless the saints, it is Pater! And it is not noon yet. 
You must have started at midnight. Mon Dieu ! you did ! 
Here, Babette, Basquenet! Take the father’s bundles 
from him. See his chamber is ready. Ah, Pater, this is 
good,” cried Robert, receiving Benedict from the old 
trap which had brought him lumbering from the village. 
Rose stood ready beside him. 

“How fair thou art,” said Benedict, a trifle huskily, 
taking her face in his hands. As he stood looking at them 
with overflowing brightness he exclaimed: “Do you 
know, children, I sometimes think that Providence brings 
about such a paradise as this once in a while, to satisfy it- 
self that a paradise is still possible to human beings. No, 
thank you. No need to waste time in the house. Stopped 
at the queer Maison d’Or, in the village. But I am ready 
for my coifee. And this is the way you live? What 
Precieux you are!” Talking, they seated themselves in 


134 


Out of the Past. 


the summer-house. ^‘Books!’' cried Benedict, ^‘in a sea- 
shell like this. Tolstoi, Maeterlinck — there is a mine of 
nuggets.” By this time he was growing breathless, 
and his coffee, steaming at his right hand, he tasted it 
carefully and a dozen times set it down to look in their 
faces with infinite satisfaction. 

^^Mes enfants!” he said again and again, with an in- 
describable accent which brought a mist to their eyes. 

^‘Tell us of your travels. Pater.” Immediately Bene- 
dict’s face fell. 

"‘Ah, it has been a sorry business. But it will bear tell- 
ing here amid your joy.” A sudden expressive lift of his 
eyebrows caused Rose to send Babette away. He leaned 
across the table nearer to them. 

“You have been watching the drift of affairs; you 
have seen pieces of wreckage on the political current; 
you have seen uneasiness in the people, fear at the Bourse ; 
you have heard the priests denounce justice from the 
sacred place by order of their superiors; you may have 
suspected that that presaged a great fear for the stability 
of our institutions; you have seen cabinets dissolve and 
ministers fall out to drown in the current — all this, and 
no one knows what it portends or what is its cause. I 
have been sent through the land to discover what I could. 
(I would they had sent another. My heart is sick with 


Out of tlie Past. 


^35 


what I know.) Everywhere — France has been betrayed. 
And when the people know — God help us. The people — 
the poor, common people, have slaved for the Republic, 
have paid their endless taxes for the support of their idol, 
the army, and for the Government incidentally. They 
pay their tax; they leave the rest to their betters. The 
deluded creatures do not know that the safety of the state 
is not founded on their money, but upon the share they 
take in public affairs. But they have no understanding 
of public affairs. They are babes — haven’t I seen it? 
They hear things are not as they should be, but they can- 
not right them. They stand stupidly by; leave it in the 
hand of the bureaucracy until the time for the barricades 
comes. The barricades — ah — those they understand. 
They can give up their lives in a blind revolution — kill, 
murder, wade through to another regime — count their 
dead — go back to their ploughs, their furnaces — look up 
to the new regime as if it were a god — stand by and wait 
until the unchecked powers wielding the new machinery 
become again foul, and again their idol must be burned 
in the furnace — execrated of the people.” 

‘‘Has this to do with Dreyfus?” 

“As an excuse — only an excuse — a wicked one. But 
what would you? The death of one man, or a revolu- 
tion ?” 


136 


Out of the Past. 


^^But the revolution may come in spite of the sacrifice/’ 
suggested Robert. ^^Because of it and the wrong it im- 
plies.” 

‘‘I fear it.” Suddenly Benedict looked at Rose, grow- 
ing white. ‘‘But — it may not be so bad. No — not so bad ; 
there will be no revolution at all. Such follies belong to 
the past, of course — to the far-away past. Another cup ? 
A thousand thanks. And all this talk of mine has so lit- 
tle to do with ourselves — and yet — whom do you suppose 
I discovered as one of the anti-Dreyfusite tools — the bal- 
let dancer.” 

They looked at one another. 

“I have watched her course. She will drag down what- 
ever she touches. And still she is ascendant, growing 
richer — but the end comes — in time.” 

Babette came timidly from the house, stopping at a few 
paces to say : “Monsieur, there is a man from Paris wait- 
ing to see you. He came on the same train with Father 
Benedict, but walked over.” 

“A gentleman?” 

Babette shrugged her shoulders and spread her hands 
deprecatingly. 

“Give him some coffee and ask him to wait a few mo- 
ments.” 


Out of the Past. 


137 


must be in haste/’ suggested Rose, ^'coming by 
that train.” 

‘^Never mind, ma mie. It will do him good to rest. 
Have you more to tell us. Pater ?” But Benedict had been 
studying the varying color in Rose’s face. ''No — it is all 
rather hazy and improbable — very much like vaporings 
over a European war which fan the air from time to time 
— nothing in it. But what I should like to know is the 
meaning of the very peculiar name of this village. Porte 
le Sauveur de Peche — there must be a legend of some 
sort belonging to it.” The question was put to Rose, but 
noticing a fatigued look in her face, Robert took up the 
reply. 

"Yes, a peculiar one. You see the sand bar making out 
north beyond the lesser bay — a white-capped little penin- 
sula. On this side of the farthest breakers a deep gully 
has been worked in the bar. The current makes into it 
with a swirl and a rush. It carries to the bottom whatever 
it brings or finds on the surface, beats it about and casts 
it up on the bar with the outgoing drag of waters, which 
is very strong. It is said that a century ago, when cha- 
teaux were more plentiful than now, a lord lived on a 
grand estate a few miles inland. There is the usual tale 
of a fair village girl and of uncongeniality in his house- 
hold, which was centered at the Court of Louis XVI. But 


Out of the Past. 


138 

the girl was not usual. When she found that her child 
would be illegitimate, although at that time the stigma 
upon the child would have been milder than now, she 
walked out upon the bar and let herself into the swirl of 
the waters in the death hole. Here the legend becomes in- 
coherent. It is said that her village lover passed with his 
catch of fish as the outgoing waters cast her up on the 
sand; that he vowed a sacrifice to Our Mother of Com- 
passion if She would save the maid. That at the end of 
his prayer he found her breathing and that he married 
her. Her children’s children to-day rule in this part of 
the country. And so the spot is called le Sauveur de 
Peche. The chateau went down before the revolution 
and its master fell before the Sans Culottes, and his name 
is now extinct in the land of France. That is the legend ; 
half gruesome, half satisfying with its crude justice. But 
I should not care to try a prayer against the swirl of 
those waters. Now I must go to the man from Paris. 
Shall I bring you a shawl, ma mie ?” 

Benedict’s eyes softened as he watched them. Their 
happiness was so full and simple, so free from either af- 
fectation or parade. He could imagine a rare communion 
of thought between them, but he saw that they were not 
likely to show him what that communion might be. 

‘‘How well he looks,” commented Benedict, watching 


Out of the Past. 


139 


Robert’s quick, elastic movements, his fine proportions 
showing a clean-cut silhouette against the white wall of 
the house as he entered it. 

''He is the handsomest man on the Riviera,” smiled 
Rose in reply, "not only to my eye, but to men, women 
^nd journalists — and they are sometimes jealous, you 
know. You can have no conception of the furore he 
created and of the sums of money offered. He has taken 
a Titan’s leap since we listened to his debut — really.” 

"You see what happiness may do for a genius coming 
at the right moment. You must feel his success as your 
own.” With blushes and glistening eyes Rose answered: 

"Yes — it came after our betrothal. I watched his mas- 
tery growing grandly, but now — nothing can hinder 
him. He will take his way to the zenith whatever hap- 
pens — even to me.” For a moment he saw the shadow 
of melancholy of which Robert had written. It spread 
over her face like the shadow of a spring cloud and left a 
tear where it had passed. Benedict felt a sudden, name- 
less fear tighten his heartstrings, but when he looked up 
she was smiling upon him serenely and had reset his 
plate with honey and rolls. The incident puzzled Bene- 
dict and lingered in his memory, giving no excuse for 
itself and being wholly unwarranted by the glowing 
health nature seemed to have lavished upon her. Upon 


140 


Out of the Past. 


Robert's return, Rose excused herself, promising to be 
ready for a stroll with them later in the day, and the men 
walked along the shore toward the peninsula. 

‘‘This is a serious business upon which you are en- 
gaged, Pater." 

“Nothing more serious has risen since the coup d'etat." 

“Not even Boulanger?" 

“Not even Boulanger. The danger is not in the am- 
bition of one man, with a following of malcontents. It 
is a disease of the state which has eaten to the heart of 
its departments until there is left a honeycomb of rotten 
tissues. And that I should live to see it I I believed so 
in the integrity of the nation! I loved her institutions 
and her proud place !" 

“The crisis may pass." 

“To what good end? Let the state further despoil 
the nation ? Let the army go to rack ? Bring our name 
to deeper disgrace among nations with scandal of legis- 
lature, scandal of court, scandal of the army? No! 
Bring on the revolution! Let Jacques Bonhomme once 
more play surgeon and cut out the heart of the evil. A 
monarchy once more. Then the Republic will rise again 
purified with a constitution, let us hope, which will make 
these shameful evils impossible." 


“Do you mean- 


Out of the Past. 


141 

mean that I welcome the revolution — I shall work 
for it.’’ 

^‘You, of all men — priest — philanthropist — lover of 
men !” 

‘‘It is because I love them. Do you grudge an arm 
on the Clinique table if it mean life?” 

“But a revolution. My God!” said Robert, slowly, 
breathlessly. 

The priest did not hear. With knitted brows he 
looked over the restless sea, and then, as though in an- 
swer to some insistent doubt, he exclaimed uneasily : 

“It cannot be so bad as it was in other days. They 
know more. My children know more. The Republic 
has done much for them. In God’s hand — it is in His 
hand. He may dispel the storm at its very bursting. He 
may show the people a better way.” For a moment he 
dropped his head in dejection. Then, clearing his face 
of its anxiety, Benedict turned to Robert unexpectedly : 

“And your news from Paris. A man does not take the 
midnight train on slight provocation. It must be a 
friend or ” 

“An enemy,” finished Robert. “It is the latter, a 
nasty business, and I cannot see whose hand it is.” After 
a momentary silence, Benedict impatiently exclaimed: 

“Well?” 


142 


Out of tlie Past. 


must be kept from Rose at all hazard. She already 
has something on her mind, probably the blow she re- 
ceived in that letter — whatever it was. Our physician 
has advised me to persuade her to free herself by telling 
me. But — well — it takes more courage than I have to 
ask for a confidence she does not offer — looks like dis- 
trust or suspicion, when there is no taint of that sort in 
me.’^ 

“Yes — but you fill me with impatience. The man from 
Paris — what is he — what does he want 

“Money for a safe kind of blackmail.'' 

“Faugh !" 

“But there is just enough equity in it to fill a sensitive 
mind with terror." 

He fell silent, and Benedict watched his uneasiness 
with an anxiety he could not hide. 

“I wrote you that we were married after the ways of 
her church. There was no civil marriage." 

“Man !" muttered Benedict with a gesture of sharp im- 
patience. 

“Our child will not be legitimate under the law of 
France." Benedict started, then quickly laid his hand on 
the other’s shoulder. 

“What did he want?" 

“Money."^ 


Out of the Past. 


143 


^^Did you give it?'' 

‘^No." 

''You sent him about his business?” 

"Yes.” 

"Roughly?” 

"Of course.” 

"What will he do?” 

"What can he do beyond menace?'’ 

"What can he not do! A nicely worked-up scandal 
may advertise Robert Dinsmore, the greatest violinist of 
his generation, but do you think it will do nothing else?” 
Robert looked at Benedict's denunciating face with fear 
in his own. 

"He cannot!” 

"It may already be in press. You know the press of 
this civilized world. Scandal is money — good fortune — 
its staff of life. But what was your plan ?” 

"My plan is to leave France as soon as possible and 
go to America. There Rose will be safe.” 

"You say as soon as possible. To-morrow?” 

"In a week. It will be hard to get Rose away, even 
in that time. She will not wish to leave. There are a 
thousand details and there is no reason to give. I dare 
not tell her this, ^he is so excessively fearful of even 


144 


Out of the Past* 


the word illegitimate, and I have already received one 
warning.’’ 

‘‘Have you had any offers from America yet?” 

“One.” 

“Close with it. Make that the excuse. Get away to« 
morrow.” 

“Why do you insist on to-morrow?” 

“Because I have seen so much in this France. If your 
enemy is rich, there is little that cannot be done to you 
and to her. Without her, you could fight it out to a 
finish — to a coup de grace, if need be. But with her — 
you are defenseless. Keep the papers from her and be- 
ware of every stranger. I would you had stopped his 
mouth with gold.” 

“But the wrong of it !” 

''And — Rose ” Benedict let the words fall heavily 

of their own weight, and Robert turned away from him. 

Rose herself came into the midst of their disquiet with 
a telegram which she handed Benedict, waiting on 
Robert’s arm while he read its contents. 

“I hope it will not take you away when we have had 
scarcely time to realize that you are here.” 

“But it does. I am more sorry than you. I would 
give all I possess to remain with you during the coming 
week. The Superior sends for me. There is informa- 


Out of the Past. 


145 


tion none but I can give, which he needs at this moment. 
I must take the outgoing train.’’ 

‘'And arrive at midnight? The monastery will be 
closed,” objected Robert. 

“The way to the office of the Superior is never closed.” 

Silently they returned. A quick dejeuner and Bene- 
dict started with Robert on the road to the village to catch 
the three o’clock way-train. 


CHAPTER X. 


When they had gone, Rose went to her room, ex- 
changed her dress for a loose robe, and took possession 
of the recess of her window with a sigh of comfort. The 
sun glowed in the west, its light breaking to a sea of 
diamonds tossed on the heaving breast of the ocean; a 
purple cloak of clouds in the horizon folded back from 
the face of the shimmering sea; near at hand the sands 
shifted to and fro, enslaved to the capricious fingers of the 
playing waves. Gradually the cloak of cloud darkened 
the glowing sea ; and slowly, with its threatening rise, a 
shadow crept over the lovely face watching in the house 
on the sands. 

''When he is away from me, I long to tell him. I seem 
to see how much better it would be and how much he 
would help me to forget, as he has forgotten the terrors of 
his own life. But I cannot remember when he comes 
near — I am so happy then that it all seems unreal — I 
think almost that no letter ever came to me — no blight 
ever fell. But when he is away — then I am afraid.’’ She 
gave a quick little look about the room. "I am afraid, 
too, of something else. Does a man ever fully forgive 
such a flaw in the woman he loves — would he be quite 


Out of the Past. 


H7 


the same after he knew the truth ? If he should know — 

if he should know that I am a No ! No !” she cried 

aloud. ‘‘I cannot! I dare not! Better bear it alone. 
Startled at the sound of her own voice, she drew back 
into the cushioned recess and, after a moment, continued 
her concentrated thought. ''It would be easier to bear if 
it were not for the voices and for that other thing — the 
sense of some unseen presence. I do not see why they 
should trouble me or where they come from. I do not 
believe in them; I do not believe God lets such a thing 
exist. I know it is some hallucination, but how to get rid 
of it. Since that dreadful day of the letter, the voices 
have come one by one — now there are a great many. I 
think if the pressure here would go away, they would go 
too.” She laid her hand back of her head and moved 
uneasily. "Perhaps they will all disappear when I have 
that dear little face to look into. There can be no such 
horror upon its life as it’s father and I have had to bear — 
thank God !” A fervent smile lit her face. She went to 
the door calling down the stair, "I am up here. I was 
sure I heard you.” 

Robert exclaimed, as he entered, "How fatigued you 
look. Has anything happened to worry you ?” 

"Nothing new,” she answered, letting him examine her 
face. 


148 


Out of the Past. 


^^Sweetheart, can you not trust me ? I wish you would 
tell me what it is that consumes you. I leave you the 
picture of health. I return to find you pale and tired — 
dark circles about your eyes — drawn lines about this dear 
mouth — a lassitude to your very finger tips. Will you tell 
mer 

‘‘I would rather not. It will all disappear soon. If it 
should not go away — soon — I will tell you — only — prom- 
ise it will make no difference in your love.” He started 
ever so little ; but she felt it. 

‘‘Is it something you have done?” he asked. Her eyes 
and the way she drew apart from him answered for her. 
He grasped her hands to bow his head upon them. 

“Forgive me — forgive me. It would not matter what 
you had done or what you could do — I love you, dear 
heart. You believe me?” There was a long silence. A 
shaft of pain seemed to have struck to her heart. His in- 
voluntary movement had spoken more eloquently to her 
fears than his words. If ever his ideal of her should be 
shattered, he would love her only because and when she 
compelled him, and that to her was not love. How ter- 
rible pain from his hands could be she had never known 
until now. There were no tears that could flow with it ; 
it filled her breast with suffocating pain. 

In great contrition Robert brought her a glass of wine 


Out of the Past. 


149 


and held her in his arms as though to drive away the re- 
vulsion he knew he had produced. 

Toward evening, when the threatening tempest had 
obscured the sun and had filled the heavens with vast, 
hurrying shapes. Rose fell asleep on his shoulder, but 
woke to forget her pain when Babette tapped on the door 
to announce dinner. With her sudden transition of 
moods, she dressed herself and went to the brilliant little 
salon, low ceiled, crystal lit, adance with the fire lighted 
for the sudden chill of the storm, with an enticing gayety 
which took complete possession of Robert. 

"'Here's to your home beyond the seas," she smiled; 
"here’s to your home, Robert." 

"My home?" 

"Of course. You are no Frenchman. Oh, yes, I 
know — you have their gestures from force of propinquity. 
But you do not think like a Frenchman, and you do not 
love like one." 

"How do you know?" 

"Oh — that is my secret. I have observed them." 

"Now Rose " 

"Jealous?" 

"You are a little tantalizing. Who, I should like to 
know 

"Number one — An old gentleman who would like to 


Out of tlie Past. 


150 

exhibit a person like a piece of ancient glass in a cabinet. 
Number two — The young man who has a fit of love like 
a summer madness, chilled dumb by November. Num- 
ber three — The middle-aged who wants to settle down 
and keep one for his sole comfort. Number four — The 
flurried, florid liaison — but that’s out of the question. 
Where are you in the category? You don’t fit, you see. 
You are no Frenchman.” 

‘Then what?” 

“Just a downright American. You don’t know the 
dialect, the accent, the manner. You don’t know our 
way of fun — but you do love like an American gentle- 
man.” Robert blushed. 

“And it is so much nicer,” she added, with an inde- 
scribable sigh of satisfaction. 

“Parbleu! How do you know?” 

“Well — you see, in America, one learns to know some- 
thing about men, because they have a way of falling in 
love with you, and you have to let them try to win, and 
then if they don’t, you say no, and after awhile you know 
something about them.” 

“I see. That is a shocking vista to my eyes.” 

“But wasn’t that just what you did? Did you woo like 
a Frenchman ?” 


“Perhaps not ” 


Out of tlie Past. 


151 

“Your race was stronger in you than the influence of 
environment. What a fool a Frenchman would have 
thought himself in your place. You received no dot, or 
rather none went with me; you just knew my small self 
and that was all/’ 

“All I cared about, naturally.” 

“Don’t you see how American that is ? But I suppose 
you cannot see that yet. Then our mutual enjoyments, 
and our philosophical discussions, and your way of loving 
your companion, instead of possessing your wife — ^to 
which I should seriously object — all of that is distinctly 
American. When we go over you will see what I mean.” 

“I should like to go soon.” 

“Soon?” 

“Yes. I am seriously thinking of cabling my accept- 
ance of that offer you remember. Then we would have 
to go in a week.” 

“Oh— but I couldn’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“So much to do — to close up — store our belongings — 
pack what we want for home. Oh, I couldn’t in a week.” 

“But I will do most of it. Men can come out from the 
city, etc.” 

“I want to take a few clothes home.” 


152 


Out of the Past. 


*%tt somebody take your measure and send them after 
us/’ 

^'Awfully extravagant.” 

^'1 am afraid we must do it, dear. Do you mind very 
much?” 

‘‘I do not know. It is so sudden.” After a pause with 
a suspicion of tears in her eyes, ‘^And all our lovely, 
quiet summer gone; people again — the voyage — excite- 
ment — engagements — no time to ourselves. Oh, dear.” 
am as sorry as you.” 

‘‘I am afraid the craze for success has you in its grip, 
and then it is good-by to me.” 

He took his coffee to a place beside her. 

‘'This is what I propose. We will go over in a week — 
that is settled. Once over, I will engage for the coming 
season, but will do nothing now. Then you shall select 
some corner in your beautiful country, and we will have 
a quiet summer to ourselves. How will that do?” 

“Beautiful. But I do not see why you cannot cable that 
agreement and remain here until fall.” 

“It is better for me to see the men and have every- 
thing settled.” 

“Robert, you are fibbing. There is something else.” 

“Yes,” he replied in a low voice. “There is love of 


Out of tlie Past. 


153 

you. I want to see you away from here safely.” She pat- 
ted his hand with a swift, dreamy smile. 

‘'Then we will go. Order it as you like, dear.” 

Winds were beating at the shutters ; the rattle of whirl- 
ing sand came from the fretted glass. Doors banged as 
Basquenet ran to the summer-house to save the flowers 
swinging wildly in its alcoves. 

“There!” exclaimed Rose. “Do you hear the carriage? 
Isn’t it a shivery sound ?” 

“Gruesome, I confess.” 

“That is the way it rumbled all night when you were 
on trial. It really frightened me.” 

“I do not wonder. It sounds so like it that ” 

“Don’t go out, dear. There is nothing there. A high 
wind blew then as now.” 

“I rather like it. It was the next day that you chal- 
lenged me on the sands to a race among the pools — and 
I had no overshoes, only the thin evening wear I used the 
night before. The fact is, I spent most of the night in 
the forest, trying to find my way out. On returning to 
the city I just had time for a bath before catching the 
train. What a nightmare it was — and what an awaken- 
ing!” 

“There it goes, off over the downs toward the penin- 
sula. It sounds like a coach of the eighteenth century. 


^54 


Out of tlie Past. 


Imagine the ladies, the outriders and all, out floundering 
in such a night. Now that we have had the awakening, 
I hope we will not come to the nightmare again.’’ So 
saying. Rose led the way to the curtained alcove window, 
where they could watch the storm riding through the 
night. 

In the morning Robert went to the village to offer the 
house in rental to its former owner, and to Paris to attend 
to the many details which their sudden departure had 
raised. He could not return until the following day, and 
called Babette to him before leaving. 

‘‘Your mistress is not well. Do not allow any one to 
disturb her. If the man who came the other day from 
Paris should return, tell him that I will call or send to his 
office before long. Do not allow him to see madame un- 
der any circumstances. Mind ?” 

“I hear, monsieur. He was bad, I know.” 

“How do you know?” 

“By the way he looked out of the sides of his eyes. I 
didn’t feel safe with the silver till I had seen the last of his 
back. He has been once in jail, that’s certain.” 

“And how do you know that?” 

“By the way he looks behind him.” 

“Then he could not bribe you, Babette?” 

Babette choked and walked off. 


Out of the Past. 


155 


‘‘Never mind, child,’’ cried Robert. “If I had seriously 
doubted you I would have said nothing. I have trusted 
you in giving this warning.” 

“I understand, monsieur. But you might have 
known ” 

Robert meant to say something comforting, but Babette 
had rushed off in a way he remembered from the old 
days. 

In his absence Rose prepared her lists and passed a busy 
day. In the afternoon she was surprised to hear an alter- 
cation at the door. Babette’s voice in a passion could not 
be mistaken. 

“If you put your foot on the sill I’ll squeeze it flat. 
Monsieur is not at home, and you cannot see madame. 
I told you that ten minutes ago. No — you cannot see 
madame.” 

“What is it?” asked Rose from above. 

“A beggar.” 

“Then shut the door.” Looking over the bannister she 
saw an evil face peering in through the narrow opening 
Babette had left. 

“But his hand is in the way, madame.” 

“Shut it,” said Rose, quietly. The hand quickly slid 
out and Babette locked the door and leaned against it, 
panting. 


156 


Out of tlie Past. 


‘'Ten long minutes he has been here, Miss Rose, trying 
to get at you.’’ 

“At me? How strange. You must be mistaken.” 

Babette closed her lips with a snap, but would say no 
more, and kept a romantically vigilant watch over her 
mistress until Robert returned the next day. Late in the 
afternoon, as he and Rose were sauntering over the beach, 
comparing lists and details, Babette appeared with sup- 
pressed excitement to say that some one wished to see 
monsieur. Babette’s excitements were so easily set afoot 
that they never surprised her mistress, who tranquilly 
awaited Robert’s return until tired, and then took her way 
to the summer-house. She had been there some time, 
when, glancing at the house, she saw a face at the window 
which startled her to her feet. 

“The Dancer here?” she asked herself. “Surely she 
cannot have the effrontery to make a second attempt. She 
must need help of some sort. I wonder why Robert does 
not send for me — probably because he knows how dis- 
tasteful she is to me. But I ought to receive her.” 

To enter the house Rose had to pass under the windows 
of the dining-room, where she had seen the face. As she 
came under the first window a few words in Saline’s in- 
cisive voice arrested her. 

“No — do you think I have forgotten my lonely ride to 


Out of the Past. 


157 


Paris ? Oh, no. That sort of thing a woman does not for- 
get. It is needless to proceed. I cannot be bought off. 
I want to see you reap the fruit of your mistakes. I do 
not know why you should have wished to deceive Miss 
Lloyd ; but you certainly did so. By the laws of France 
she is not your wife, as none but the civil marriage is rec- 
ognized by the state. If I were quite merciless I would 
not bring this to your notice while there is still time. My 
friend, the attorney, who has twice called upon you, is in 
need of money. I therefore propose that you put it in his 
hands. He will see to it that the irregularity is over- 
looked; the civil marriage can then be performed, and I 
shall have been the means of making you both happy.’' 
Her words closed with a sweeping courtesy. 

Robert replied coldly: 

‘'Thanks ; you are disinterested. In your place I would 
have waited the coup de theatre. In consideration of your 
kindness you may tell me what sum your thief attorney 
asks, and perhaps I will pay it to you now.” 

“Ah, that — he must settle it. You can see him a week 
from now, perhaps. I do not know his plans.” 

“And now you will kindly leave my house. I am ex- 
ceedingly busy this afternoon.” 

“So I saw from the windows,” she replied. As he 
moved to the door, forcing her to go with the storm she 


158 


Out of the Past. 


felt gathering behind his cold control, a revulsion of 
feeling came to her. 

‘'Why did you deceive her? She was the only woman 
I ever loved ; the only woman I ever saw who could never 
be such as I. Why were you willing to make her child a 
bastard?'’ The menace of his eyes frightened her; it 
drove her to the door and out of it without another word. 
As she stood on the step, trembling, a sound of whisper- 
ing drew her attention to Babette kneeling and bending 
over something prone under the windows. The woman 
knew at once. 

“What have I done ?” she cried under her breath. With 
superstitious fear she noiselessly stepped nearer. At her 
presence Babette raised her head and straightway came to 
her feet. 

“Don't you dare look at her. You are bad. You be- 
long to Satan. Go — or I'll stone you. The stones bite. 
They won't leave much beauty in your face." Saline 
smiled and at that Babette made one blind, mad rush. 

She does not remember how many stones she threw; 
she knows that some found their mark in the terrified 
face; she knows that she ran until the memory of Rose 
lying in the dust blinded her eyes with tears and she fled 
back to find that Robert had carried her mistress to 
her room. What happened there Babette never knew. 


Out of the Past. 


159 


She knew that monsieur went about the house white to 
the lips, with beads on his brow. She remembers that 
she ran all the way to the village with a telegram to 
Father Benedict^ and she remembers the half hours and 
the very minutes as they passed, and never will be able 
to forget them till she goes to sleep forever. 

Whenever she went to her mistress’ room she found 
her lying silent, with closed eyes, and whether she slept 
or whether she waked Babette did not know. Once when 
monsieur was out of the room Babette leaned over her 
and kissed away a tear. But Rose made no sign that 
she was conscious, and Babette choked herself into silence 
in the snowy curtains of the great bed. 

Father Benedict arrived early in the morning, bring- 
ing a physician ; but the physician soon left without com- 
ment, save that her nervous system had received a severe 
shock ; that he could prescribe only tonics and rest ; that 
beyond these he could suggest nothing until madame 
had come to herself. The day was spent in waiting. 
They knew that she was lulled once to sleep by Robert’s 
playing, but they think she did not sleep again. 

Robert would allow none but himself to watch with her. 

At dawn he fell deeply, perilously asleep, with his 
hand upon hers. 

He dreamed that she rose and stood by his side, that 


i6o 


Out of the Past. 


she kissed him many times, with falling tears, and he 
slept again. 

In the morning the house was wakened by one great 
cry. It brought Benedict from his room, Babette from 
the kitchen, and the servants huddling at the foot of the 
stairs. 

Midway in the room Robert stood looking wildly 
about him. With both hands he pointed to the empty 
bed. 

‘'No, no, my son,’^ said Benedict, “she is elsewhere in 
the house. She is better — ^that is all.’’ 

Robert heard none of it. He was rapidly reviewing 
all that had happened in the last three days. 

A look of absolute terror grew in his face. Out of the 
room, and out of the house, and swift over the shelving 
sands. There was no time to lose. Mother of Compas- 
sion, she was not yours ! Leave her to us ! 

He dared not raise his eyes to the sea breaking north 
on the peninsula. He raced at it head down. He heard 
no one behind him. There was blood in his eyes. There 
was no breath in his body. 

He came to the spit of sand in the white teeth of the 
breakers. Whiter than they. Rose, all that had been 
dearest in the world, lay there at his feet and the sea 


Out of the Past. 


i6r 


lapped lovingly at her where it had laid her dead in the 
cradle of sand. 

Benedict came none too soon. He waited, standing 
over the bodies, with sobbing prayer, until Robert rose 
a madman, and Benedict fought with him for their lives. 

It was a mad fight. The sea waited greedily on either 
hand. Their feet slipped into its sucking current. The 
hot sun broke through the clouds and beat upon them. 
Their bodies swayed black in the light from where Bab- 
ette saw them on their knees in the glare. 

At last Benedict crushed him down beside the peace- 
ful dead, gasping with spent breath: 

'Xook in her face! Pray!’’ 

God knows whether or not it was prayer. 

Robert’s youth was dead. The bread of life had been 
turned to ashes. 


CHAPTER XI. 


*"Out of a worldful.*’ 

Seven months afterward a clear, beautiful night hung 
quiet over the Milton hills of Massachusetts, and Milton 
Hall stood genially glowing out of the shadows. 

It was not yet time, and the music-room was alone 
with its mistress, a slender, delicate woman, silver-haired 
and deft-fingered, with dreamy eyes. The tall man en- 
tering through the far portieres had streaks of silver in 
his hair. But he was young. The lady watched him 
closely, earnestly, as he came forward. 

"‘Am I speaking to my hostess. Miss Winthrop?’' 
asked Robert, and the lady assented almost nervously. 

“Of course, you are Mr. Dinsmore — Mr. Robert Dins- 
more ?” 

“Yes, madame. I was shown to my room before 
meeting you.” 

“I am very glad you have come — very. I wonder 
where my brother is — I want him to see you first, before 
the rest, I mean. Pardon me ; I thought you were much 
younger.” 

She was growing more nervous, and Robert noticed 


Out of tlie Past. 163 

it with some surprise. Was this the vaunted self-posses- 
sion of an American hostess ? 

‘^Age is not always truthful. I certainly am not very 
young in feeling, not so young as my birth-date would 
make me.'" 

thought you were only twenty-three or four." 

^'That is true, madame. My hair? It turned white one 
morning on the seashore, under a burning sun. Such 
things happen sometimes." 

Miss Winthrop dropped into a chair, working her deli- 
cate hands as she looked into Robert's face with some 
mute appeal which he could not understand. 

She continually glanced from the clock to the door 
until Robert also fixed his eyes upon the vacant spot 
with an expectancy reflecting her own. Conversation 
seemed so difficult that they waited in silence. Many 
minutes passed. 

A step sounded in the hall, and Miss Winthrop rose 
to it slowly, breathlessly, it seemed to Robert. Until the 
doors opened he remained seated, then he also rose and 
stood waiting. The gentleman entering exclaimed, as 
he turned back to close the doors : 

'‘Has not Mr. Dinsmore come yet? I cannot overcome 
my " Turning, he encountered Robert's face. "Rob- 

ert Dinsmore," he said to himself, slowly and quietly. 


i64 


Out of the Past. 


Robert went forward mechanically. He had seen that 
face in the mirror not a quarter of an hour ago. But this 
was an older face, a happier one than his own. Miss 
Winthrop hurried to them impulsively. 

‘‘Forgive us, Mr. Dinsmore. We are very rude — ^but 
we will explain later. You seem to come terribly close to 
our lives. Have you ever known your father ?” 

“No, madame.” 

“And your mother?’' exclaimed Mr. Winthrop, quickly. 

“My mother died at my birth. I bear her name — 
Dinsmore.” 

“Amy Dinsmore,” corrected Mr. Winthrop. 

There was a pause, during which the three looked keen- 
ly at one another in a sort of arrested animation. Robert 
drew from the little finger of his right hand two rings 
and handed them to Mr. Winthrop. 

He examined them aside, tremulously, and returned 
them with a face which, in that moment, had undergone 
a change. 

“Those rings are mine, my son. They were your moth- 
er’s.” Robert winced. “Her engagement and her wed- 
ding rings.” Then his voice broke from its excited sup- 
pression. “Do you hear?” he cried. “He belongs to us, 
Dorothy — ^he is ours — all ours — this splendid fellow — 
Dinsmore — the great Dinsmore ! My son !” 


Out of tlie Past. 


165 

Sounds of arriving guests murmured from the hall. 
Dorothy Winthrop hurried Robert and her brother into 
a recessed room and locked its door^ and when the three 
emerged the sun seemed to have risen in their faces. 

When the musical and the ovation to the great violinist 
were over, when the guests were gone and again they 
were alone together, they looked at one another in fresh 
wonder. 

"‘If Rose could only know !” exclaimed Robert to him- 
self. 

'‘Your betrothed?’’ his father asked. 

"My wife.” 

"How glad we shall be,” cried Miss Winthrop ; but her 
happy face turned to Robert’s eyes and the joy died out 
of her voice. 

"No — Rose is dead,” he answered steadily. 

What had been before a thought, an inspiration to 
Robert Winthrop, now became a reality. He gathered his 
son to him and straightway Dorothy Winthrop passed out 
over the shining floor and closed the music-room. 

"Such a fate as that was mine. I know what it means,” 
said the father while Robert learned a new pain in poign- 
ant sympathy. "Your mother and I were married with- 
out my father’s knowledge, not sensibly, perhaps, but 
nobly and truly. I was recalled to speed him through the 


i66 


Out of the Past. 


gate of death and soon all news of my bride ceased. As 
my father still hung between life and death, I sent my 
nearest friend to Paris. Before word could come from 
him, I fell crazily ill, and when again there was any 
sense in my empty brain, Amy had disappeared as though 
she had never been. That was my sorrow — a frightful 
uncertainty which, even now at this late day, has often 
waked me at night with a clammy fright of what it may 
have been that befel her. There are natures so infinitely 
caressing that they twine about your heart in tendrils 
that live a man’s life out. From these there is no escape. 
If your Rose was one of these, I pity you, my boy.” The 
look in Robert’s face was such as a man hates to see. 
Winthrop said with a woman’s tact: 'T have looked for 
you from that day to this. Tell me of your mother. Now 
that her son is here, she seems at my side once more.” 

In telling the tale, Robert freed himself of the intensity 
of his mood. Often when the terrors of his early life 
suggested themselves Winthrop grew hot and uneasy, 
exclaiming : 

‘'Absurd! Monstrous!” And again: ‘Tt was a lie! 
You were more honestly born than many another in wed- 
lock. You were born in wedlock of love !” It seemed to 
Robert that Winthrop was literally re-living his life with 
him. 


Out of the Past. 


167 


''Then the keynote of your life has been illegitimacy 

"Yes ; you must consider that that was the frank, gen- 
eral supposition. It went near to making a hideous dis- 
cord of alf He paused painfully. "In the end, it was 
illegitimacy that robbed me to skin and bone. The fear 
of it for her child bereft Rose of her reason — sent her 
to death by her own hand.’’ 

Winthrop said no word. Tears rose hot and biting 
to his eyes, and he listened, unconscious of anything but 
the quiet power of the man before him and the knowl- 
edge gained of a fearful world hitherto unknown to him. 
At last he rose, when Robert had told of his life at the 
Riviera, and the end seemed near, saying: 

"Let us go out. It is stifling here. Do you smoke?” 

Two points of light and the tread of two strong men 
passed up and down the long piazza. Moonlight cast 
shadows of the odorous pines aslant the ground. The 
cold freshness and the peace of midnight brooded in the 
air. 

"And that was the end,” finished Robert; "seven 
months ago.” There was a long silence before the father 
said huskily : 

"The end — and the beginning. We are two men to- 
gether. We have a good deal of a life to live. It is hun- 
ger to the heart, I know. But there is a deal of satisfac- 


Out of the Past. 


i68 

tion in struggle and achievement, and there is some lit- 
tle pleasure in victories won for sake of a beloved mem- 
ory. I speak of what I know. And yet — pardon me — 
there is one hunger that probably has not reached you, 
the hunger of a man for his own creation.” Winthrop 
stood eagerly apart until he received the quick, vibrating 
response : 

‘'Something like the longing of a man for his father. 
I have known that all my life.” 

Their hands met and they turned into the house, having 
found each other out of a worldful of men. 

THE end. 


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